


Waterlow

by Wicker



Series: Brothers in Arms [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Blow Jobs, Bottom Benny, Bottom Dean Winchester, Canon Compliant, Case Fic, Choking, Complete, Corpses, DBBB, DBBB 2015, Dead People, Dean/Benny Big Bang 2015, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Light BDSM, M/M, Past Castiel/Dean Winchester, Smut, Spanking, Top Benny, Top Dean Winchester, Torture, Torturer Dean, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 02:36:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 43,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4162443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wicker/pseuds/Wicker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean brings Benny on a hunt, in a poorly-conceived idea of a working vacation. An easy investigation of a nest in Vicksburg, Mississippi goes quickly awry when the case expands to involve Sam and Garth, and long-buried ghosts of Benny’s past harangue him as he finds himself unable to keep the humans he cares about out of harm’s way.</p><p>This story takes place in the middle of Season 8, in between episode 10 (Torn and Frayed) and 11 (LARP and the Real Girl). </p><p> Art by TKodami (AKA <a href="http://dustyjournal.tumblr.com/">Dustyjournal</a>) (<a href="http://tkodami.livejournal.com/7629.html">LJ</a>) (<a href="http://tkodami.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mississippi Queen

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> [+++Waterlow Mix Tape+++ ](https://play.spotify.com/user/burningwicker/playlist/4Oa4Cu6AYtez3tWTnw2SC1)  
> (Songs for each chapter title, all classic rock.)

 

The mortal world had remained fundamentally the same, but some things were entirely alien to Benny, and he figured that feeling adrift in the quagmire that the modern world presented was to be expected. The crux of the problem was that Benny wasn't used to people anymore.  The gap in time since he’d first died kept rising up out of unfamiliar inventions, tossing him around in the wake of a future that moved too fast. It was painfully evident that the past few decades in Purgatory had chewed their way thoroughly through his manners, leaving behind the bare bones of polite conversation and very little patience.

Benny was worried about how deep he could sink in this modern life, and just how bad of a monster he could become. He was being careful, but there was only so many short-order cook jobs that were out there. The bigger problem was finding blood banks that didn’t ask questions.  Dean had given him a few contacts, but they also sold to hunters, it seemed, so it was smarter to not stay long enough to let a pattern develop.

His truck had broken an axle when he had pulled off a dirt road and hit a hidden concrete butte, and the tow service had said he owed them two hundred, cash, just to get it back to town.

Benny had managed to walk away from the dirty, little linoleum office without biting anybody who worked there, which was a win that still felt like losing. In any case, the pickup was done. He let them have it for scrap, signed off the title in an illegible scribble, and walked off down to the coast with his cooler, the cell Dean had given him, and a spare set of clothes.

He’d called Dean, out of desperation and loneliness, and he’d gotten the “end of the line” talk, but two hours later his phone rang again and it seemed like the hunter had changed his mind.

Now it was four in the morning, and the fog swathed the land and the bugs quieted down, just the same as it had for the last hundred years (more or less) of Benny's life.

There were so many lakes in this town; not his town of course, but one he'd banked on being somewhat unchanged. Now there were homes dancing along the swamp-laden shores and strewn through the sparse land around the slough. He didn't hate people, really. But they were just... everywhere.

Standing on the side of the road in Pascagoula, Mississippi, he couldn't help the loathing and wrath welling up in him from the sound of a distant leaf blower. It reminded him constantly of his innumerable failures to coexist with people, and reinforced the reality that he wasn’t one of them, not anymore.

He clutched his cooler firmly in one hand as he held his peacoat around his middle. Benny was waiting for Dean. Dean couldn't make everything right of course, that went without saying. But he would try, and that was what mattered.

The Impala finally thundered down the offramp and came to a stop by the culvert where Benny stood, and he felt the tension in his body slowly slide out of him. He had to admit, the car looked like a limousine to him.

Dean leaned over to open the passenger door. "Hey, Benny. C'mere." He yawned as Benny crawled in and settled the cooler between his knees.

Benny could tell that Dean had driven all night to get to him. "Thank God you came, Dean," he leaned over to give him an awkward side hug.

Dean shrugged and patted him hard on the shoulder. "God’s got nothin' to do with it. Cooler's in the back. Brought you a pint."

"Thank you, brother." His comment made Dean’s eyes crinkle with a half-smile as he looked out onto the deserted road. Benny would always call him that, even though Dean had never done the same. Dean had a real brother who came first.

The Impala’s engine roared as they made it  back onto the highway, and Benny gratefully slurped the packet of unlabeled blood. AB by the taste. He closed his eyes and relaxed in his seat, listening to the engine rumble. Dean didn’t comment on what he was drinking, and for that he was grateful.

 Art by TKodami (AKA [Dustyjournal](http://dustyjournal.tumblr.com/)) ([LJ](http://tkodami.livejournal.com/7629.html)) ([Tumblr](http://tkodami.tumblr.com/))

* * *

 

 

Dean drove north, away from the coastal swamps and bayous, letting Benny have a little nap while he watched the road. Benny needed it, but he still floated on the edge of wakefulness most of the time.  

He could smell Dean all over the inside of the car, which was maddening for a whole different set of reasons, but he simply focused on being near the hunter, eternally grateful for the human contact that made him feel less of a monster.

Purgatory had left its marks on him in a lot of ways, but it hadn’t erased his desire to be one of _them_ again.

It was six in the morning when they stopped at a Waffle House, and Dean ambled in and ordered a coffee while Benny cheerfully did the same, heading for a spot that wasn’t sitting in the sun.

Moments later the mood in the booth chilled as both men were faced with the awkwardness of their predicament. Benny could almost tell what Dean was thinking, about how he was a hunter and Benny was what he hunted. It was probably a lot for him to overlook. Dean opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times, and glanced at Benny’s untouched menu. He didn’t seem like he wanted to explain his decision to come for Benny just after telling him that they’d reached the end of whatever _this_ was.

Benny cleared his throat. "So... I'm sorry I put out the S.O.S, brother, but I was just barely hanging in there."

Dean nodded, jaw tight as he looked past Benny's head and out the window. "I know. Just... are there any bodies behind you?"

"Not since... not since that mess with your Martin."

Dean opened his mouth and closed it as the pixie-cut waitress brought their coffee over. Dean ordered a short stack with sausages, and Benny just shook his head with a small smile. He didn't feel like talking anymore, not with the way his great-granddaughter had looked at him after he'd drained Martin on the floor of her diner.

They picked up their mugs and sipped from them in unison. Dean spoke first, "You know, I told you, that thing with Martin was self-defense and I understand -I would have done the same thing in your shoes."

Benny leaned forward, hunched over the table. "Look... it's not... the thing about coming here after Purgatory is- well... I was there for a long, long time. And it was always how it was. Kill everything you see, and don't apologize for it. But those other things, Dean? They weren't people. They were monsters, and it was fair. Because I am too."

Dean sat back in the booth. He didn't look happy, but he also didn't argue.

Benny continued, unable to look Dean in the eye, instead choosing to stare into his coffee  "I killed Martin with my teeth. I fell off the wagon. I was faster, stronger, and smarter than him and I could have done just about anything _besides_ killin' him, and I did it anyway."

The hunter rubbed his forehead. "I don't know how many times I can tell you I forgive you, man."

Benny held his coffee mug with both hands. "I'm so... so very grateful that you do."

The change Dean’s face went through as their waitress slid the greasy pancakes over, was something to behold. The hunter smiled at her, instantly faking a veneer of normalcy. "Thanks, darlin’. Got any pie?" he asked sweetly.

"Pecan pie is cooling down. Ready in ten minutes, sweetheart," She was damn cute, not that Benny really tried to notice such things. He thought it was strange that Dean flirted so readily, but it didn’t really make him jealous.

He hungrily picked up a piece of bacon and gnawed on it in a way that was almost suggestive. "Awesome,” said Dean.  “Can I get it to go?"

 

* * *

 

 

Next to the open road, the ubiquitous North American motel was Dean's native environment.

Pulling into one such nondescript roadhouse, Dean went to check them in, leaving Benny to standing in the parking lot with his cooler.

Staring across the rural two-lane highway Benny took in the sight of a giant white rocking chair standing about seventy feet tall. He figured it must be some kind of forgotten tourist trap. What was so interesting about a giant chair was anyone’s guess. 

When Dean left the motel office, he was blushing.

Benny followed him with their bags, wondering why the man was so pink, until he saw the room over Dean's shoulder.

A large bed sat against the rear wall, and the place was decorated in red and gold. Dean walked in and set down his pie on the small linoleum table near a countertop fridge.

Benny let the door shut behind him, it was loud in the strange silence. The vampire cleared his throat and started putting their duffel bags down on a nearby vinyl-coated chair. He gestured to the king-sized bed with a raised eyebrow, feeling like he ought to talk about the inevitable images it conjured up. "Well, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Dean, but I figured the things we did in Purgatory were kind of... well, any port in a storm, you know?"

Dean paused in taking off his jacket, then turned to smirk at him. "Any port in a storm? Wow, that's some epic flattery."

“Remember when you said what happens in Purgatory stays there?”

Dean laughed. “Well, we didn’t.”

He had to admire how good Dean could be at exorcising tension. Benny smiled and looked at the bed, smelling the ghost odors of furtive couplings in the room. He decided he didn't mind the seediness of the place and kicked off his shoes while peeling off his peacoat.

He was startled when Dean pressed his body firmly against his front, hand rolling down his side to pull at his concealed holster. "You're carrying a gun now?" His breath was warm against Benny’s ear, and it almost tickled.

Benny finished removing his coat and sloughed off the armpit holster. "Yeah. Never had to use it yet, but it's better to scare with than my teeth."

Dean nodded and pulled off his shirts, flinging the flannel and t-shirt it over his shoulder in a chaotic bundle as he dropped to his knees in front of the vampire. Benny had missed the sight of that tacky tattoo, almost as much as the broad expanse of freckled shoulders.  

Benny swore he could feel the heat of Dean's flushed face through the front of his Levi's. Then the hunter started to mouth at him hungrily through the rough denim, Benny clutched Dean’s scalp and groaned at the sensation.

Dean gasped back, and eagerly worked at his jeans to get them open. Benny didn't want to rush, but his cock was aching, so he let go of Dean to unbutton his fly and let himself out.

Dean’s hand found its way to his cock as though it was magnetized. "Still no underwear? You know they sell that at Wally-World."

"Shut up, Dean," he pulled Dean's head back to his groin and shuddered as he immediately started to nip and lick the underside of his shaft.

Benny knew that Dean had appreciated a rougher hand in Purgatory, but they'd never really had the time for anything other than fevered, urgent comfort while they were being pursued. God, how he wanted to make this last.

When Dean's lips sealed around the tip, Benny gasped. He looked down at him and let go of the hunter's scalp.

Dean looked up at him, brow impatiently furrowed, as he started to slowly slide down his cock, mouth stretched wide around his thickness, until the head brushed the back of his throat and he broke eye contact to gulp.

Benny had hoped his voice would sound less strained, but no luck, "Dean, stop, dammit, I'm gonna come too quick."

Dean somehow managed to smirk with just his eyes and leaned back, letting Benny’s cock slip from his mouth. Benny rolled his shoulders and closed his fist around himself, stoically refusing to jerk his cock until he came all over Dean's freckled face and naked chest. He stared down at him kneeling on the floor between his feet, greedily drinking in the sight before him, all pink lips and flushed cheeks.

His hunter was looking at him again, licking his bottom lip.

"Jesus, Benny, I want to take it slow but it's been _months_ ," Dean stood up to finish taking his pants off, struggling since his boots were still tied. The hunter hopped onto the bed and managed to get his shoes off with his jeans.

Benny nodded. "Me too, but I dreamed about this. Shit, brother, I had nightmares about this."

Dean had a hand on his cock but paused in his stroking when Benny’s words sank in. "What's that mean?"

The vampire removed his t-shirt, revealing his broad chest. He saw Dean squeeze himself and smirked, sliding his pants down his hips. "Vamp dreams, ya know."

"The kind where you kill me?"

Benny nodded and stepped out of his jeans, still standing away from Dean on the bed. He felt something uncertain tremble inside him, looking at the man splayed across the tacky comforter.

"I want you to fuck me," Dean said, stating what was plainly obvious. His pupils were enormous.  

Benny bit his lip at that, and sank down to his knees next to the bed. "When I’m done with you, you’re gonna let me drive, brother."

Dean scoffed, "Big talk. Lube's in my duffel."

Benny put his hands on Dean's muscular hips. "After we do this fast. I ain’t gonna last long enough to get inside you at this rate."

Dean stopped stroking himself and brushed his fingers against Benny's ear.

He didn't wait for Dean to say anything else, just took Dean into his mouth, slid his tongue against the head, and groaned at the taste of him. It was a little embarrassing how much he’d missed this.

If Dean had one problem, it was keeping his goddamn mouth shut. "Benny.. oh God man, that's awesome," Both hands came to rest on Benny’s scalp, and Dean combed his fingers through his short hair, which always made him shudder. Dean arched and pushed his hips up, and Benny groaned around him as Dean twitched on his tongue.

Benny clutched Dean’s ass and bobbed, gulping around his cock when it slid into his throat. Not having to breathe gave him an advantage in the oddest of places; and staying down while he swallowed around the firm head was one of them. He kept his tongue moving, doing his damndest to make sure the hunter came first.

"Jesus, oh sweet fucking... _fuck,_ " Dean was losing his eloquence along with his mind. His hips twitched as he fought to move, but Benny held him firm and spread his hands across the taut muscles tensing above his ass. He wanted to touch himself, too, but wouldn't because he'd go off in a matter of moments.

And this... this was about Dean.

Dean was obviously itching to thrust, so Benny pulled back enough to allow him some movement, and immediately Dean started to rock his pelvis and gripped his head tighter. He arched on the bed, his mouth open and filling the quiet room with shallow gasping. Benny kept trying to memorize the feel of his skin under his hands and lips, as though it would be the last time.

Benny relaxed as Dean thrust, letting him fuck his mouth, and groaning when he felt him swell on his tongue.

Benny went ahead and lowered his hand to stroke himself roughly, closing his eyes and savoring Dean's taste as his hips stuttered and hot come jetted against his tongue. Benny gulped as he pulled back, letting it drip on his lips and chin.

Benny's vamp teeth were starting to slide down over his human ones. He stood up in front of a shell-shocked Dean and smiled at him as he flopped back on the bed. Bless him, Dean could see the teeth, but he didn't have any fear in his eyes; even when Benny crawled upwards and straddled his stomach. He could do what he wanted and the kid wouldn't fight him at all. It shouldn't have been such a turn-on, but it was.

It only took a few strokes of his cock before Benny groaned and came on Dean's chest, sooner than he'd like, but he could count on one hand the number of times he'd gotten off since escaping Purgatory.

He bowed his head and rolled off of Dean, teeth receding slowly.

Dean gripped his shoulder firmly, which always reminded Benny of the hunter's own faded imprint. He looked over at Benny and cleared his throat. "C'mere."

It took a moment before Benny realized that Dean wanted to snuggle. That was different; then again, they could afford to be relaxed out of Purgatory.

The vampire laid down beside him and let Dean arrange himself comfortably around his side. "I never pictured you as someone who wanted to cuddle after."

"Shut up, you're spoiling the moment," Dean rubbed the  the hair on Benny's chest with his open palm. Then he kissed his temple and withdrew. "I gotta shower and get on the phone. You rest. I'll wake you up in few hours."

Benny realized he shouldn't have said a thing. He smiled softly anyway and pulled the blanket over his body, letting his socks stick out the bottom.

 

* * *

 

"Anyone ever call you ‘Ben’?" Dean was evidently aware that Benny was awake, and he had just continued to lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Not since I was with my own kind." He stretched his arms above his head and looked over at Dean, who was sitting at the tiny table in his underwear, eating the pecan pie slice from the diner. Benny smiled, filing the image away.

"...Alright, we're sticking with ‘Benny’." Dean smirked.

"Want to tell me more about where we're going?" He was going to keep an eye on Dean until he got dressed, and commit as much of his body to memory as he could.

"Yeah, Vicksburg. There's a vamp there, or a nest."

"So you’re not on vacation. Bodies droppin'?"

Dean chewed a moment. "Fourteen found this month. Two in the river."

"So probably a lot more than fourteen."

"Maybe. Most vics were destitute, outright homeless," Dean said as he sat back in his chair.

"Dean, you know a lot _about_ vamps, but you don't really _know_ a lot of vamps," Benny rolled out of the blanket and propped his head on his forearms.

Dean frowned a little until he looked at Benny naked on the bed, and then he turned pink.

Benny shrugged. "There's a reason for everything. This is sloppy, which means... well, it means one of two things. Someone's fresh-made and doesn't have a maker, or... or there's a nest trying to attract attention."

"Baiting hunters?"

"I can't think of anybody else dumb enough to show up for that kinda party," Benny smirked.

Dean scoffed. "We're going to hit a blood bank in Jackson, and then I want to get you a suit and get Garth working on some fake I.D.s," he stood up and ate a bite of pie crust. "It's two now. We gotta leave by four."

"So I'm Sam now?"

"Very fuckin' funny," He crawled onto the bed and laid against his side. "Sam might have a chance at being normal, so... good for him."

That took a minute to seep in. "Dean, you could too."

Dean took in a deep breath with his head nestled under Benny's chin. "It's fine. I don't look back."

He stroked his fingers through Dean's fine hair. "You should know... how hard it's been to not drink from anybody."

"Yeah, I know," Dean seemed to be listening for a heartbeat. "I've been there," he turned his head to nibble at the vampire's chest. "Now cut it out. Enough sappy moments for one goddamn day."

Benny chuckled, "Tell me how you like it then."

"Dude. Dude," he snorted. "Like you don't know."

Benny let his words drawl out, "If you ask real nice it might happen before four."

Dean rolled away on the large bed and flopped on his back. "You really want me to talk about it," he sighed. "Fine. You already know, but fine. I like it rough. You can hit me, hurt me, bend me over something and fuck me as hard as you want. I'll take it."

"Yeah, I figured that part," said Benny as he reached out his hand to card through his hair again.

"You can choke me, and I trust that you know how to do that right. You can tie me up too. That'd be awesome." Dean's eyes were closed, and he was starting to blush over his whole chest.

"Any things you don’t like to do?" Benny touched Dean's cheek softly.

"No blades," Dean shrugged, "and maybe no biting."

"Good idea," he tugged at Dean’s hair, mulling it over. It was odd that he wasn't into actual weapons, considering how handy he was with them. "Got a safeword?"

"Yeah. Penguin," He snickered.

Benny laughed too. "Fuckin' ...why?" He stroked his forehead.

"Because it's funny," Dean sat up.

Benny nodded. "You ever like it gentle.. or sweet?"

"I'm already sweet enough."

Benny sat up and laid a hand on Dean's warm side. "Yeah, I got it," He pulled him back against his chest and nuzzled his jaw. The vampire could have felt his pulse beating from across the room, but next to his cheek it made him shudder with need.

When Dean pulled away, Benny actually felt a slight chill. Dean went to his bag, pulled out a tube of lube, and casually tossed it at Benny before producing a roll of quarters.

Benny stared at the roll of quarters for a moment before making the connection to the “magic fingers” machine beside the bed.

Dean broke the wrapper and slipped two coins in, grinned, then flopped onto the bed face first as the vibrations thrummed through the entire bed.

Dean looked over as he heard the sound of Benny's rumbling laughter. "C'mon, man. Don't act like you'll fuckin' break me. Let's _go_."

Benny grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him closer as he rolled him onto his back, strong enough to make it clear that he could do whatever he wanted with him. He'd been with enough men to know that most found his girth uncomfortable without ample preparation, so he forced Dean's legs open and clutched his ass, growling. "Relax, baby. You're gonna get it soon."

Dean groaned and reached down to close his hand around his own cock and let his head roll back.

Benny was perfectly happy with Dean not looking. As comfortable as Dean seemed around him, he was always worried that the hunter would see him in a moment where the hunger he always held at bay would stand out on his face. He didn’t want to show him how much he needed this.

Benny guarded his expression as he pressed a knuckle against Dean's hole, watching Dean open his eyes just enough to peek at him. On an impulse, he slipped his finger against the ring of muscle and found only a token resistance. He groaned and withdrew. "You been fuckin' somebody else?" He didn't think he sounded displeased, but Dean frowned a little.

"No, I just...had some time in the shower." Dean actually blushed, and Benny slicked his fingers with lube and grinned wide.

" _Saleau,_ " Benny slapped his thigh, and nudged closer until his cock was nestled in the crook of Dean's thigh. He pulled the smaller man's knee over his shoulder, slicked his entrance quickly, and thrust two fingers in right away.

Dean gasped softly and squeezed around him before relaxing against the intrusion.

"Gonna do this quick, I can't stand to see you so empty."

Dean's calf tensed on his shoulder as he tried to take his fingers deeper. Benny teased him and slowly twisted them out, then replaced them with the head of his cock. He hadn't had a man in bed in a long while, but he felt like he couldn't possibly hurt Dean like this, not with the way he widened his knees and arched his back.

He pulled the hunter's other knee over his bicep and let Dean impale himself, the muscles in his legs trembling slightly as he descended around him.

Benny watched Dean's face as he accepted the girth, but had to turn and kiss Dean’s calf when the head of his cock bumped a little bundle of nerves and Dean shuddered.

He thrust shallowly, barely able to move within the tight confines of his hole. He knew how it had to burn inside him, and yet Dean couldn't stop moving, writhing for more friction.

Benny should have turned Dean on his stomach. Maybe some part of him, lurking deep, wanted Dean to see the monster fucking him. He groaned and leaned forward, bending the hunter in half as he began to rock his hips back and forth steadily, staying just coherent enough to find Dean's cock with his free hand. Benny pushed Dean’s hand away and took over stroking the hunter’s length.

Dean reached his hands up to brace himself against the headboard. The magic fingers clunked to a halt, and that's when Benny realized that Dean was whimpering. His hips began to stutter; Dean was so unbearably warm inside.

Benny fucked him hard, keeping him bent in half, groaning with the most intense pleasure he'd had in fifty years. The only reason he wasn't already filling him with come was the release he'd had a few hours before.

His thrusts weren’t as brutal as he could have been, considering. He ached to stop and feel Dean’s persistent throbbing around his cock, but he couldn’t slow down now, not when sliding in felt so good.

He dropped his head to Dean's chest and felt the hunter’s heartbeat pounding against his forehead. He was fucking him with enough force to drive the air from his lungs, and he knew his vamp teeth were out. Jaw aching, he opened his mouth to lick Dean’s skin, instantly dizzy and unmoored from the taste on his tongue. He bit his own lip and drew blood in a huge gash, and knew that he had to pull back. 

Dean brought his hands down and clutched at his shoulders until he saw Benny's face and abruptly let him go. "B...Benny, ah...ahfuckme, sonofabitch," he instead gripped the pillows around his head, knuckles white.

Benny gripped Dean's cock in his fist and pistoned hard into his ass until Dean held his breath, and then the vampire sank himself in all the way to the root and let Dean's breathless spasms take him down.

The hunter came with so much force that he sent Benny over the edge as well, he shivered as Dean managed to spurt onto both of their chests. He tried to be stoic but the body writhing beneath him wouldn't be denied.

Dean just breathed hard, eyes rimmed with wetness. Benny knew it must feel odd to have a cock in him that wasn't as warm as it should be and started to pull out. Dean gulped and arched a little as he left him, and he gasped when his legs could straighten out again.

Benny sat back a moment before reaching for a sheet to mop them up with.

"Want to sleep a little more?" Dean asked, wiping his eyes.

"I'm good. How about you?" He put his hand on Dean’s quaking knee, stilling it.

"I'm just... gonna lie here for a bit. Wake me in an hour?"

"You got it, brother," Benny went to shower. It had been a couple of days, and well, as reluctant as he was to wash Dean's scent off of him, he was a big fan of new beginnings. This felt like one.

When they had been with each other in Purgatory, things had been entirely different.

Benny stood under the spray and washed himself clean, fingers traveling the parts of his body Dean had touched with his hands and lips.

Dean had been at his side before, or rather- Benny had been with Dean on his quest. Dean had warmed to him; but more than his smile, Benny had craved his respect. That was why he waited for Dean to make the first move, when they were wandering the wasteland of Purgatory together. The hunter that was his brother had snatched him up from the void of his bleak future two times now, and this time, he wasn’t burdened by an urgent mission or harrowed by monsters.  

Dean could rest around him, and trusted him enough to do just that. Benny ducked his head under the water and smiled as the warm rivulets carved through his short beard.

Freshly baptized, he got dressed with the sound of Dean snoring and sat near the window of the room, keeping an eye on the Impala in the front lot. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> *Saleau: "A sloppy, dirty man."


	2. Stranger to Himself

Benny was a little shocked that Dean let him drive, even if he was still yawning next to him. Benny appreciated the fact the car was simple enough that he knew all the buttons and dials, and it handled and sounded like new. He made sure he didn't go above sixty-five as he listened to the radio, finding an old honky-tonk station that didn't play anything recorded after 1960.

It was downright relaxing, driving North up the interstate for the handful of hours since they’d left the motel. There was a nice strip of shade from the trees that shielded the road, and he kept the car on the left lane to take advantage of it as much as he could. When he merged onto highway 20 and caught the sunset in his eyes, his sunglasses did nothing. So he pulled off the highway and cut the engine. His hands stung, too.

Dean woke with a start when Benny patted his shoulder. Benny reassured him with a quick squeeze. "Sorry, brother."

Dean looked around and yawned. "Didn't think I'd sleep that long."

"You needed it," He climbed over the front seat onto the back bench.

"Hey, watch the upholstery."

Benny unfolded a military surplus wool blanket -which had holes, but would do- and leaned forward to kiss the nape of Dean's neck. He didn't like the way the hunter jerked a little. He gave Dean a wink and laid down on the back seat, and tried not to think about how Dean looked a tad guilty.

It had crossed Benny’s mind a few times that he and Dean didn’t belong together- not out here, anyhow. It had probably occurred to Dean, too.

"I'm changing the station, holy hell," Dean had a classic radio station after two seconds of static, and Benny bundled up under the blanket strewn across the back seat with his face covered. The Impala lurched onto the highway and roared up to speed while Benny tried to remember whether he knew the songs or not.

He didn't sleep, but the darkness helped his head and eyes stop aching. He guessed his skin was probably irritated from so much time in the daylight.

Dean parked the car after only twenty minutes. "You awake?"

Benny peeked out, seeing bright pink sunset tinting Dean's face. "Uh huh."

"We're at the Red Cross. I'm gonna go get your cooler filled up," Dean’s boots crunched on gravel as he walked away from the car.

The vampire waited, wondering if Dean was going to pay the place or just swindle them with one of his slick fake badges. Benny usually had to pay one of the hospital techs wherever he ended up and lie through his teeth about what the real use was.

 

* * *

 

 

Benny almost didn't hear the sound of flapping as he laid in the back seat, staring up at the pinpricks of light through the blankets. He mistook it for the sound of someone unfurling a tarp in the parking lot, but as soon as his world lurched and filled with blinding light, Benny knew it was someone else.

Opening his eyes was agony. His knees met the ground beneath him and he heard the sound of waves, but had to cover his face with his arms and fight the urge to curl down into the sand. Shore. Daytime. Brighter than daytime.  The sun was paralyzing and sank into his bones, filling him with terrible heat.

Castiel's voice cut through the soft, sizzling sound of his baking body, "Hello, vampire."

Benny grit his teeth and gripped the sand. "Castiel?"

The sky vanished. It was evening. Benny couldn't fathom how, or if any time had really passed, but he wasn't in pain anymore. He opened his eyes and saw the Impala and the little dirt lot that Dean had parked it in. The gravel dug into his knees.

The angel was beside him. He was looking at Benny with something that might be easily interpreted as confusion. "I _know_ you."

Benny felt his eyes on him as solidly as a real blow. He glanced around. Dean wasn't in sight.

"I know you from Purgatory."

"Yeah. Does Dean know you made it out?" Benny got to his feet slowly, hesitantly dusting his trousers off.

"Don't you dare speak his name to me," Castiel was completely still, even his trenchcoat refusing to flutter in the breeze.

Benny blinked and raised his hands. "Hey... we're on the same side here."

That sent Castiel into what Benny could only understand as an incoherent rage. He felt glass shatter behind his back his brain soon caught up; he'd just hit the Impala. Castiel was on him, now, a strange blade pressed to his throat and scalding hot against his skin. Did angels have murderous rampages? It was starting to seem likely.

His eyes searched the angel’s for any hint that he was still the same harrowed, sad little puppet he'd met in purgatory, and he had to give up. Nothing remained of the Cas he'd met there.

"You... you are an abomination," The angel closed his eyes and opened them again after something that looked like pain rippled over his face.

"What's wrong with you?" Benny was aware of the knife that could end him, but brought his hand up to touch his sleeve anyway.

"Nothing," said Castiel. He  seemed to remember that he was supposed to be killing Benny and leaned forward against him, his blade knife forcing Benny's head back onto the Impala's roof. The angel cut into his neck slowly, undisturbed by the vampire kicking against his immovable body. Benny was strong, and yet he was held as certainly as a bug impaled with a pin. Blood cascaded down his front and when he tried  to draw breath to scream only a hollow whistling sound escaped.

A gunshot brought it to a halt, and then the knife, and the angel, vanished. Dean was standing a dozen yards away, gun still raised.

Benny slid down the side of the car to slump in the dirt.

"What the _fuck_ was that?!" Dean was already trying to hold Benny up by the shoulders.

Benny rasped at Dean and showed his teeth. When he was seriously injured he had to drink immediately, and the hunter was too close. He pushed at him, and Dean let him go, wrenching open the car’s freshly dented door and trying to help Benny to crawl into the back seat over the shattered glass. Dean cursed under his breath.

Benny rolled down onto the floorboards and huddled behind the driver's seat. Dean brought him the full-to-brimming cooler, and Benny clawed it open to retrieve a bag that he chewed into.

"What the fuck was that," repeated Dean as he closed the driver's side door.

Benny gulped the blood down. It was incredibly fresh; it could have been drawn that same day. His neck was knitting back together so fast that it was making a soft rustling noise. "I... is that what he's supposed to be like?" His own voice was hardly there at all, sounding more scratchy and almost whistling through his throat.  Castiel had seemed lost and crazy in purgatory, but this was purely homicidal.

"Look... he's been... there's something up with him," The car roared to life again and Dean put it into gear quickly, taking his anxiety out on the gas pedal.

Benny shivered. Castiel genuinely frightened him, and it was more because he'd thought he had him figured out in Purgatory. But now he was omnipotent, unpredictable, and hated Benny.

"What did he want?" Dean asked eventually.

"He wanted to kill me," He was on his second packet. He was trying to drink slowly, to save as much as he could. "I mentioned you, and it set him off. I’m.. I’m sorry about the car." The gaping window chilled the inside of the vehicle and made it windy.

Dean was quiet for a long time. "Someone's messing around with his head."

Benny nodded, even though Dean couldn't see him behind his seat. "You know that's almost as frightening as anything I've ever heard?"

"... Yeah. Someone's pulling the strings on an angel."

"Your angel," replied Benny.

Dean sighed. "Yeah. My angel."

Benny looked at the broken glass glittering on the back seat like stars. He knew Dean had loved Castiel. He wasn't sure it was mutual, but who could tell what Castiel was really thinking? He sipped at his third blood packet and slowly climbed onto the crushed glass and leather to slouch.

An hour later, Dean's phone rang. He answered it while driving, furrowed brow visible in the rear view, "Sammy. Yeah...Yeah. He hit us first," He glanced up in the rear view. "I’m with Benny."

There was a long pause while Sam talked into Dean's ear, and bless him, Dean's tense jaw stayed still until his younger brother was done chewing him out.

"Did he say what he wanted?" huffed Dean. "No, no, he went after Benny," he glanced again at the vampire in the back seat. "Cas almost did, but I uh... shot him... Is Amelia alright?"

Even though he was only privy to one side of the conversation, the pause still seemed awkward. "Oh. Alright then," Dean cleared his throat. "Garth's got us in Vicksburg. ...Vamp nest. -Yeah. ...Call me when you get in."

Benny frowned a little. Sam was joining them, and that meant a couple of  long, resentful days at minimum. He thoughtfully sipped from the third and last packet he'd allow himself that day. There was a need to conserve what he had, and use it when Dean's little brother tried to rile him up.

 

* * *

 

 

Vicksburg was a lovely and desolate place late at night. Dean bought Benny a new shirt, slacks, and peacoat from the military surplus in town on the way to where they were supposed to stay. It looked like a proper mansion from the outside, railings festooned with vivid pink bougainvillea here and there. It was strangely domestic, which Dean shrugged off- apparently he’d booked the room “sight unseen” over the internet, something Benny had never been initiated to.

The hunter was pacing in front of the opened window of their upstairs room while the lights reflecting on the river flickered behind him. The place was nice, and Benny suspected Dean had chosen it to treat him to something a little more old-fashioned so he’d be at ease. Dean obviously wasn’t.

Benny could tell that the hunter was doing his job in earnest, now, and Dean’s focused intensity reminded him of how Dean utterly refused to unwind until they escaped Purgatory with Castiel.

He put his hand on Dean's shoulder, opposite to the one that bore the angel's handprint. The hunter gulped and set his jaw, as Benny spoke, "Dean. I know you don't want to talk about it, but Cas-"

"Cas almost killed you. If you see him again, you better run," He shrugged off Benny’s hand and picked up his beer.

The vampire looked out the window. "It goes without saying, he’d be able to kill me, and quick; _être mal pris_... But he coulda done it faster, no?"

"Yeah," Dean replied.

"But he didn't."

Dean shrugged. "No telling what's going on."

The vampire nodded and sat down on the bed while adjusting his suspenders. "He went for Sam too?"

Dean shrugged  again and sat down beside Benny. "Sam said he just saw him. I think he scared him. Angels aren't supposed to be able to find us."

"Didn't hurt him none?"

"No," Dean glanced at Benny. "And I know how Sam feels about you, so I'll lay the rules out for him again, same as they are for me."

Benny had to laugh at that. "I ain't worried about him."

Dean grumbled and turned on the TV.

Benny rubbed Dean's back gently. "Listen, I'll wait until you sleep, then I’ll go have a look around town tonight," It was strange. He was the one who had been nearly decapitated, but Dean was the one who seemed wounded. He rested his forehead against the hunter's neck and wrapped his big arms around his middle.

Dean relaxed against him. "If you see anyone you know from the old days, you let me know right away, yeah?"

"I don't plan on looking for the nest. I'm gonna go look at the shoreline, see if I find any new kills or ones they missed."

"Benny?" Dean turned his head to let Benny kiss the corner of his mouth gently.

The vampire customarily shied away from deep kissing, but wouldn't retreat from Dean. "Yeah, _c'est moi_."

"Fuck before you go?" The hunter reached behind Benny and snapped his suspenders.

Benny squeezed Dean’s middle. "You consider you might need to be walkin' tomorrow?"

Dean sighed. "Yeah, I know." He insistently turned in his arms to face him. "But it feels good with you, and tomorrow Sam's going to be here and..." He kissed Benny's jaw. "It's just.. I need someone to take me apart so I can wake up new again."

It echoed in his ears a bit; the way Dean said it almost hopefully, like his jovial tone would reduce the impact. He knew enough about the very real Hell in Dean's past that the hunter was trying to recreate.

He gulped and pet Dean's back. "I think I better go. Now's good," He untangled himself from the hunter's arms and backed towards the door.

Dean was stone-faced. "Sorry. Yeah, okay."

Benny realized he'd forgotten his hat when he reached the street. He stood on the sidewalk a moment, looking back up at the room's lights. He saw Dean pacing again and decided he'd rather forget the damn thing for now. He walked slowly towards the south end of the river.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Être: "I'm going to" (or myself- used very flexibly.)  
> *Mal pris: "Threatened at all sides; or stuck in a bad situation." (So "Mal Pris" means "stuck in a bad situation" or basically "totally boned" but in French (not Cajun) it's proper to attach être to the front of it to indicate that oneself is the subject of said total boning.)  
> *C'est moi: "It's me."


	3. The Moon Upstairs

The waterfront tributary had been re-done in one of those curiously popular, paved biking paths that curved around the river's edge until wrapping back towards downtown.  There were stock yards and shipping warehouses that hadn’t been mothballed, which he was strangely surprised by. He had seen so many rail yards and brick and mortar general stores with boards over the windows that he figured most of the industry would have passed on. This particular riverbank was technically on the Yazoo River, just northeast of where it fed into the Mississippi.  It had been evenly dug out for barges, and was a curiously rectangular piece of water, with an even and steady depth of around thirty feet.

He could see a turtle floating lazily near the opposite side.

Bodies dumped here would move slowly into the big water, and then they would just be _gone,_ carried south on that ancient current.

Benny had been standing at the edge of the asphalt, looking down the river, for hours. The current moved slow but he was picking up the smell of something dead, which was faint enough to come from almost anywhere upwind. It wasn’t a good place to dump a body, he thought grimly. A sound of clanking metal from the rail yard came somewhere behind him; cars being coupled onto a larger freight train, maybe. It was almost strange how active the waterfront was at night. Down the way there was a casino, loud music clearly audible even though the doors were closed to the road.

He shouldn't have left Dean, but at the same time felt ridiculous for his sentimentality. He pondered about calling him a few times, but never got any further than touching the phone in his pocket. And now the wind was kicking up, and the scent of death was being carried away, so Benny decided to do a little wading.

He kicked off his shoes and carried them down to some rocky gravel. There he laid his peacoat, socks, and new shirt on top of his gun and holster to hide it. He sunk down into the mud in his trousers, left his nose just above the surface of the water, and slowly moved out into the river.

 

* * *

 

Benny submerged entirely hours later when he thought he had pinpointed the smell. He dove down five or so feet before his bare foot brushed something soft, and his senses couldn't detect the heartbeat of a fish or turtle.

He found it again, identified that it was a hand, and carefully pulled. Thankfully the skin wasn't too far degraded, and he was certain that the corpse was anchored in the muck.

Benny had been down for more than ten minutes before he finally found the cinder block in the mud. He pulled it free and kept his hand around the naked body's foot while he walked to shore.

He was covered in mud as he sat on the embankment. Letting the body float there in the shallows, Benny looked it over for a long time. The man was nearly nude, slightly swollen, and purplish in patches all up and down his arms and legs. Benny only glanced at his gray face before turning it away from him.

The full, dark-colored curly hair and youthful features bothered him far more than he thought possible. The neck wound was large, and black. The wrists looked horrifically bruised too.

He sighed and fished his phone out of his jacket, taking a few photos of the young man's face and the wounds on him. Then he dialed Dean.

Dean sounded groggy, "Yeah."

"I found a body."

The phone rustled as the hunter sat up. "Yeah? Where are you?"

"The bike path on the river," He ducked when he saw a distant flashlight. "Shit."

"What?"

"Police, maybe."

"Alright, get out of there if you can. Ring when you're clear."

Benny hung up on Dean and picked up his pile of clothing before sneaking off down the stream.

He was two hundred yards away when he heard the police radio squawk and beep back at the riverbank. He put his boots on and circled the scene wide.

Benny rang Dean after he’d put his shirt and coat back on and was buying another six pack for the hunter at a liquor store. "Hey, I'm headed back to you."

"Got it," was all the hunter replied.

The hotel was actually a sort of cute Bed and Breakfast with elderly owners who kept civil war uniforms on mannequins in the lobby. He walked into their upstairs room two hours before dawn to find the hunter awake and waiting, dressed just in his underwear.

"Hey," murmured Dean, as he slid his hips down to the edge of the chair, thighs splayed wide.

Benny’s eyes darted down and back up to his face. "Brought you beer. And photos."

Dean looked him up and down. "Yeah, alright. Let me see," He took Benny's phone when he offered it, and took a moment to look. "So he was tied to this block?"

"Yep. Looks like the vamps are starting to try to hide their kills."

"You think it's a nest for sure? Not just some newb with no control?"

Benny nodded and took his coat off. "There's just too many bodies too quick for only one. And I think they held this one a while, and that means they have a place to hole up." He hated looking at the dead face, and it bothered him that he almost felt guilty for something he didn’t even do.

He left Dean with his phone and went to start the shower.

Dean set it down and followed him. "Benny, look, uh... about earlier."

Benny was silent while he stripped out of his muddy pants.

Dean's eyes were following his crotch. The vampire cleared his throat, and Dean blinked and returned to looking at his face. "Sorry, about... well, whatever freaked you out."

The vampire sighed. "Brother, I understand you got some history. I do too. But I can't do anything to you like what they did in Hell. You might think you deserve it, but you don't. I owe you everything, and I'll do most anything you want, but I ain't gonna punish you."

“Oh.” He gulped and rubbed the back of his neck. Steam was rising in the shower. Benny pulled his shirt off and tossed it aside while Dean closed the distance between them. "I know. I'm sorry. Don't do anything you don't want to do, alright?"

Dean kissed his lips gently and touched the vampire's chest. The kiss was returned, but Dean pulled away and stepped back into the shower. Benny knew he had a dumb look on his face and rubbed his beard.

"Damn, dude, you smell like the swamp." Dean arched his neck under the water and beckoned him closer.

Benny stepped in behind him and touched Dean's chest reverently, wiping the water rivulets across his nipples with his chilly hands.

He knew Dean liked to be kissed, and Benny was well fed, so he dipped his face into the spray and kissed beneath the curl of the hunter's ear. Then deeper, opening his mouth against his neck to taste the water on his skin. It took some concentration to keep his instincts in check, but Dean's soft moaning helped to keep the vampire in the moment. It wasn’t as tempting as he’d thought it would be to feel his pulse on his tongue, and it was nearly blissful to feel the life moving under his skin so close to the surface.

Benny kissed the hunter’s mouth tenderly and found Dean hungry, tongue tangling with his and chasing the corners of his mouth. Benny groaned and let Dean grab the back of his head, let him kiss him as hard as he wished while his own hands traced the powerful bunching muscles in Dean’s back.

Benny stilled when he heard a cell phone ring, but Dean just grunted and dropped a hand to Benny's dick to stroke him firmly. "Later," murmured the hunter.

He didn't argue. Dean's hands were calloused and so incredibly intuitive that he was thrusting into his palm within a minute. Dean looked down to his hand wrapped around Benny’s girth and moaned softly.

“I want you so bad,” Dean said. His eyes were anchored to Benny’s hips, but they flickered up to plead with him. “Right now, please.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” _Ever_. Benny leaned back against the wall.

“It’s okay. Lube’s in the pink bottle.” He seemed to figure out that Benny wanted to go slower, even if Dean wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to draw things out. He let go of his cock, and reached around Benny to snatch a small bottle off of the shower shelf.

The vampire swallowed and lowered his hands to catch at the line where the muscles of Dean’s thighs met his ass. He settled his thumbs in the dimples on either side and closed his eyes. For a moment, he let himself squeeze greedily and lowered his head to lap at Dean’s collarbone. Then, Dean’s breath hitched and Benny raised his head to stare at his face as the man worked his own fingers inside himself. Dean’s arousal and concentration played over his face, his arm shaking as he worked his fingers deeper. Benny felt Dean’s cock throbbing against his own and pulled him closer so he could roll his hips shallowly against each other, wet skin making their cocks glide blissfully. The shower was warming his skin and he wondered if he felt alive to Dean, yet.

The hunter panted and arched his back, legs spreading to either side of Benny’s feet. Benny found himself supporting some of Dean’s weight. He didn’t mind one bit and smirked at the man in his arms. Water slid over his shoulder and ran in a river down where their stomachs pressed together. Benny let him go and dropped his hand to their cocks, stroking them slowly and deliberately. Dean let out a soft whine.

“How many you got in there, _chère_?”

He panted his reply. “Three, damnit. Good enough for you?”  

Benny chuckled. “Don’t you sass me.”

Dean growled in his ear, and Benny grabbed him by the hips. He wrenched Dean around to pin him against the tiles with his hand firmly centered on Dean’s back. He dragged his cock against the cleft of Dean's ass, sliding between the twitching muscles.

The hunter gulped air and dropped his hand to touch himself while Benny leaned back and prodded his entrance with his fingers, slipping past the ring of muscle slowly. Dean felt lubed enough for what was coming next, however Benny still grabbed for the tube and squirted a bit on himself. “Patience.”

"Ngh, Benny. More," Dean's voice was rough.

One of the things about Benny’s lack of humanity that _didn’t_ bother him was the strength that came along with the fangs. It was no trouble to keep the well-muscled man pinned. He slid a second finger inside and twisted, pushing deep, just listening to Dean's constant moans. Benny slid the third one inside gingerly, waiting for Dean to adjust before pumping them in and out, massaging his inner walls and grazing his prostate.

Dean was trembling and Benny didn't see any real reason to draw it out further. He pulled his fingers out slow and replaced them with the head of his cock, teasing his hole with just enough pressure to nearly plunge inside.

The hunter was held firm with Benny's hand, but he still attempted to push his hips backwards. The way his moans were turning desperate was nearly enough for Benny to just plow forward. He clenched his hand on Dean's thigh. "Hold still."

Dean's lip was pinched between his teeth, and Benny watched the side of his face as he pushed forwards, impaling him slowly. Dean turned red and his eyes welled up, but he looked back at Benny and managed to raise an eyebrow as if to ask if that was all he had.

Benny chuckled and slapped his hips forward for the last inch, which made Dean raise up onto his toes and gurgle incoherently. "Still can't believe you can take all of it," he growled as he pulled out slow and shoved back in quicker, setting a lazy, steady pace that nailed Dean right where he needed it every time. He could keep this up for hours if he really wanted to wreck his lover. He groaned loudly as Dean’s pulse fluttered around him.

"Shh, the owner's republic-aaah," Dean just couldn't complete a sentence when Benny bottomed out. Benny loved being able to shut him up.

"What?" The vampire grinned.

"Republican! Republican!" He gasped and laughed, but lost the ability to think when Benny started to fuck him hard and deep.

"Goddammit, Dean, you're twice as hot when you make me laugh," He slapped Dean’s thigh again and let go of his shoulders to wrench both Dean’s arms behind his back and hold his wrists while he pounded him. When Dean's heartbeat thrummed in Benny’s ears and around his cock, he  knew Dean was close. He kissed the middle of his back, between his shoulderblades, and groaned Dean’s name over and over again.

One of these days he'd learn to take his time with the hunter, and spend an hour inside him, but not yet. He wanted a recording of the obscene noises Dean was making. He sounded furtive and lost, drowned in his passion. He let go of the hunter’s arms and let Dean work his own cock while he pushed back into the cradle of Benny's hips, groaning wordlessly.

Benny's orgasm caught up with him, a rush of sparks inside his body crashing down and forcing his muscles to lock and clench. He hunched over Dean and held him close, hips twitching with short, sharp thrusts.

It was profound, and he didn't deserve it, but for all the world he couldn't wish for it to stop. The vampire curled his fingers through Dean's wet hair and groaned as the hunter's constricting muscles shuddered around him. Dean came with a whimper and pressed his face against the tile, breathing hard.

Benny rubbed him between his shoulderblades and gingerly pulled out of him.  Neither one said anything, as Benny washed Dean while he stood sleepily under the spray, still persisting with the cocky smile that Benny so loved.

Well, maybe he just loved Dean. He didn't need to say it.


	4. Ramble On

Sam met them at a diner down the road in an old converted house across from Vicksburg's library. He had been in town since before dawn, and was apparently perturbed enough when Dean hadn't answered his phone that he'd brought it up twice while they were sitting down. They were the only people in the booths, too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.

Benny had to sit across from Sam in the only available shade, where he stared at the coffee in front of him while it steamed in a shaft of sunlight. Dean sat next to him.

"So Cas tried to off you, huh?" Sam was snacking on a piece of bacon. It was actually the first time he'd directly addressed Benny. The taller hunter hadn’t even said hello to him.

Benny nodded, hands in his pockets. "Yep," He let the silence hang for a moment, then cleared his throat and spoke again. "Hey, Dean, can you give that Garth guy a call and ask why he tipped the angel off?"

Dean blinked. "Huh?" He stared at his coffee, thinking for a few moments while Sam chewed noisily. For a guy that had ordered an egg-white omelette, he was sure chewing his pork with gusto.

“You said hot wings can’t find you… So ain’t Garth the only one that knows where you both are?”

Dean grit his teeth and pulled his phone out. "Yeah. Damn. Yeah."

Sam squinted at Benny, and the vampire took a lightning-quick sip of his coffee before returning his hands to his lap.

Dean touched the screen of his phone and held it up to his ear until Garth picked up. "Yeah, hey Garth. So... let me know if I'm even in the ballpark here... You let Cas know where we were, right?" He set the cell down on the table and turned on the speakerphone.

"Well, yeah, of course... he's an angel," All three stared at the phone. Garth sounded embarrassed, and hastily added "-and he asked nicely."

"How did you find us, Garth," Sam was glaring at the phone.

"Oh, okay, speakerphone." Garth cleared his throat and continued. "Look, Sam, I know there was that police report and all, so I used that alias and looked for charges to that card. Found you booking a room in Lubbock."

‘ _Police report?_ ’ mouthed Dean, looking at Benny. Benny shrugged and raised his eyebrows.

Sam looked uncomfortable. "And you just... gave this information away?"

"But he's your friend." Garth replied simply.

Benny glanced over at the distant waitress, who was texting near the restroom.

Dean cleared his throat. "Look, Garth, he's not right in the head, right now."

"Uh... look, if I'm not supposed to trust a guy, you should let me know before I give him your GPS, Dean"

"What GPS? In our phones?" Sam leaned over the table to speak.

"No... Um... I put a tracker on the car."

Dean's hand slamming the table sent the phone skidding across the tabletop, until it clinked against Benny’s cup and spun a little. Garth was already stammering an apology.

" _Son of a bitch, Garth!_ " Dean growled at the phone.

"Waitress," said Sam.

"Bye, Garth," Benny poked the red phone icon on the contraption to hang up. He knew he scared the waitress with the hat, sunglasses, and collar pulled up around his ears. He tried a small polite smile to help her out.

Dean looking like he wanted to rip the table from where it was bolted to the floor probably didn't help too much, either.

She looked between the three of them, spine tense. "Food alright? Need any refills?"

"Thanks, _chère_. We're alright," said Benny. She poured more coffee into Dean's mug and went back to talk to the kitchen workers. Benny sipped his coffee again as Dean stirred some sugar into his.

Sam was the first to speak after a minute or so had passed, "So.. the police report. Amelia... Her husband pulled a gun on me."

Dean was in the middle of a bite of french toast. He cursed around the food, "Fuck, Sam."

His younger brother pushed his plate away. "I know. She wanted to talk to him, and well, she has feelings and asked me to come along for moral support. He didn't actually pull the trigger or get close, but the cops got called."

"She's married, Sammy? What the fuck."

Benny unobtrusively picked up Dean's phone and pulled his own out, copying Garth's number into his addresses. He never met the kid, but he sounded useful for finding folks. The vampire slid Dean's phone back into his pocket in front of Sam, whose expression went through several changes before the taller hunter sat back in his seat, glowering at them both.

"Can we talk about the case?" Benny asked as he put his own phone away.

Dean had caught Sam's reaction all too well and looked around guiltily. "Yeah, um... Sam, we'll need to suit up. Benny pulled a body out of the river and we need to talk to the local P.D. anyway."

"He pulled a body from the river?" Sam looked incredulous. "Did he put it there?"

Dean was more offended than he was. "Sammy, you're... really endearing yourself to me right now. This is a case, alright? The body wouldn't have even been found if Benny hadn't pulled him out."

Sammy huffed, "Fine, but this isn't going to work, and you know that."

Benny was suddenly left wondering if Sam was referring to the case, or Dean and himself. He blinked a few times and raised his eyebrow at Sam.

"Sam, I trust him. So shut your cake hole."

Benny picked up his cup of coffee and held it, thinking about how the thick earthy liquid was still well above his body temperature even after being on the table for forty minutes. "Sam, the boy had been in the river for about two days. He was bled slow."

"How do you know?" Sam frowned and ran his hands through his hair.

"I've seen a lot of bodies in the water," The sun’s slow drifting was allowing him to have a little slice of shade on the table now. "And the bruising on his wrists. He was tied up for a time, before he died."

Dean started to pull out twenties and left two on the table, a more than generous tip. "Look, Sam, like I said, we need to talk to the local PD, and Benny shouldn't be out more than a few hours in the daytime anyway."

Sam grumbled as they left the booth.

Benny took shelter in the back seat of the Impala to stay out of the sunlight, but watched Dean work his way under the car, heels digging into the dirt to scoot him further. He came out a few minutes later with a long black plastic tube, taped on one end with a wire coming out of it and a small light that blinked. Sam stood next to the car, looking down at his brother, hands in his pockets.

"This looks like a bomb," grumbled Dean, “and I'm going to punch Garth for bolting it to the muffler." He handed the device to Sam. "We're keeping this. It might come in useful, but figure out how to turn it off, brainiac," He slid in behind the wheel and smirked in the rearview mirror at Benny as he started the Impala.

 

* * *

 

Benny paced in their room at the bed and breakfast after he politely dodged the owner, claiming a headache. He popped open the cooler, sipped on a pint of blood,  and opened the windows of the room to listen to the street.

Eventually he laid down on the bed and closed his eyes, folding his hands over his chest. He wanted to ask that the brothers do this sort of thing at night, so he could be included, but knew it was impractical. He wouldn’t make a good fake FBI agent, anyway.

He listened to the heartbeats of the people around the building, and down the street; and in the space of an hour was able to find the kind of restless sleep that he was accustomed to.

The shore was peppered with stones and starlight glinted on the calm surf. The boat was silent, finally bereft of living things. He was dreaming a memory of the gulf coast, something from the year before he’d met Andrea. He walked down the starboard side of the ship to the stern, where he’d bound the bodies to each other, and tied them all to a spare anchor. He looked away from the tangle of still limbs and kicked the coil of chain over the side, absently watching as the bloodless corpses followed it and slipped into the lapping waves. The water tinted black and stagnant, the bodies floated unnaturally, and Benny watched with his hands leisurely on the railing as they bobbed, the moment seeming to last far longer than it should have.

One of the bodies had freckles that Benny hadn’t seen before, but Benny couldn’t see his face. The vampire watched the corpses slip under the surface, vanishing as though it had never been there at all.

 

* * *

 

Dean roused him as he entered the building, which was strange enough. It dawned on Benny that it was the hunter’s familiar heartbeat that he’d recognised, before Dean opened the hotel room door.

Sam was with him too, which did put a dampener on things. Benny unfolded his hands and opened his eyes, trying to not look groggy as he sat up.

Dean started pulling off his tie. "We're definitely changing hotels, Benny. The owner's wife almost followed us in here."

Benny had the good sense to look sheepishly modest when Sam squinted at him. He stood near the window while Dean sat down on the pink couch at the foot of the bed.

"Did you find anything?" Benny asked.

"Yeah," Dean ran his hands through his short hair. "The guy you found in the river is a John Doe. He was drained. Four other bodies they found had ligature marks and were drained too. But the rest... they had teeth marks on their necks, but they still had a lot of blood in them."

Sam crossed his arms. "I've never seen a vamp pass up a meal."

Benny raised an eyebrow at him, but let it slide. "Any more John Doe’s?"

Dean nodded. "One guy from a shelter, just went by Red. They can't find much else about him."

"So they're all homeless so far?"

"No. One of the drained ones was a prostitute, another a casino worker. But that one's weird because the coroner's time of death estimate was changed."

"What's that mean?"

"Coroner thought he died on the eleventh, but then moved the date to the fifteenth because the records showed he’d kept showing up to work. He said maybe he was in warmer water, decomposed a bit faster."

"Huh. I guess that’s possible." Benny stood up and went to uncap a beer, watching Sam watch Dean. He could tell Dean's little brother was worried about him. "I'll go check out the casino tonight, yeah?"

"Let's all go. We'll get in and look at the cameras, see if we can watch last week's tapes," said Dean.

"We only have two maintenance suits," Sam frowned.

"Yeah, let me worry about that," Dean stood back up and came over to take a swig from Benny's beer.

Sam looked away. "Right... Well. You want to get on that, and I'll work on finding us a room somewhere?"

"Dude. Two rooms somewhere." Dean winked at him.

Benny almost felt his skin warm.

 

 

Art by TKodami (AKA [Dustyjournal](http://dustyjournal.tumblr.com/)) ([LJ](http://tkodami.livejournal.com/7629.html)) ([Tumblr](http://tkodami.tumblr.com/))

 

* * *

 

Benny was stuck with a pacing Sam, who was hanging around the room well after Dean had gone; the taller hunter had made them reservations for the bland Ramada Inn down the street. It didn't take a lot of brains to figure out that Sam was uncomfortable, but didn't want to leave either. His distrust for Benny was palpable, hanging on the air as thick as jealousy.

Benny pulled out his phone, continued ignoring Sam, and called up Garth.

The kid answered on the second ring, "Hello?"

"Hi, Garth. This is Benny Lafitte."

A decidedly long pause. "Oh."

"Yeah, well, you sent Castiel and he almost killed me, so I think you maybe need to make that up to me."

"I see," Garth cleared his throat. "What do you want?"

"I would like you to find a … an old man. Look somebody up. If he's alive, let me know. If he's not.. well, let me know that too, _non?_ " Benny turned his back to Sam but still felt his eyes on him. He wished he had privacy suddenly, because if anyone would use this against him, it would be Sam.

"Yeah, who is this guy and why? I can't do it if you're gonna go after him."

"His name is Charles Lafitte. He was born in 1924. He'd be 89 in January."

"Why do you want me to find him?"

Benny sighed. "Because _p'tit boug_ ain't seen me since '41, do I really gotta say it?"

"He's your son?" Garth’s voice dropped an octave.

"Yeah. Heard through some family that he was a veteran."

Garth sighed into the phone. "Okay. Fine. I'll look him up for you."

"Keep this number, let me know when you do," Benny hung up.

Sam was staring at him. "Who's Charles?" He could probably tell that the vampire didn't want to talk about it, it was fairly obvious from the hunch of his shoulders. Sam cleared his throat in the awkward quiet while Benny sat still.

"My son. I just want to know if he’s alive," Benny rubbed his forehead. “Went to a nephew’s funeral earlier in the year. Just.. found the obituary in the paper.”

"You didn't ask anybody there? What about Elizabeth?"

"Didn’t talk much when I was there. I just... I’d just got back. And Elizabeth... well... I asked her a little bit about her folks, she didn’t really tell me much. I ain't sure I got a right to know," He clasped his hands together. "He's probably dead, and I been gone too long to fix anything."

Sam looked a little sad and shrugged. "Benny, look,  I don't think you're any good for my brother. But you also haven't hurt him yet, and I know you helped him out in Purgatory."

"Thanks for not killin' me, then," He sat back in his chair and played with his sunglasses.

"Listen, Castiel and Dean... Cas remade Dean. From scratch. He pulled him out of Hell."

"Pulled you out of Hell too."

"Yeah, but... Well, before Cas, I thought Dean was straight," Sam was blushing just a little. He looked away out the window at the darkening sky.

Benny blinked at him, slowly. "Sam, I know about Dean and the damned angel."

"Then you know how messed up this is."

Benny tilted his head. "I ain’t gonna break him, Sam. That's already been done." The glare leveled at him made Benny pause a bit. He probably could have said that better. "I'm trying to give him hope. Maybe Cas will be right again someday, but right now I'm here for your brother."

Sam sat down on the pink couch. "Fine. I said my piece."

Benny stared out the window at the clouds that caught the light of the sunset, waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chere': "Lady" 
> 
> P'tit boug: "Little boy"


	5. 25 or 6 to 4

Sam got the call to confirm the reservation at the newer, bigger convention Ramada, and Dean picked them up in the car.

Benny walked straight to the Impala and sat down in the backseat with his things, resenting the humidity in the late spring that swathed the area in a blanket of invisible sweat. His peacoat and cap that kept him out of the sun were starting to seem less plausible in the late spring weather.  Sam brought down one of Dean's bags as the older brother checked them out. Then Dean quietly grumbled as he drove the dozen blocks to the newer hotel. He seemed to be expecting his brother and Benny to have a fight, or at least some kind of pissing contest. Benny pushed it out of his mind; he was too old to get in the way of sibling rivalry or whatever this was.

Benny stayed on the side of the seat that wasn't in a shaft of sunlight, and he smirked at Dean in the rear-view mirror when he glanced back at him. Dean pulled around to the front of the building and handed over the keycards to Sam. "221 and 222. I'll be back after I find a uniform."  

 

* * *

 

Dean returned at dark.  Sam looked a little bit startled that Benny stood up and opened it for Dean before his brother even had his keycard out of his pocket.

Dean huffed as he entered the door. Sam rolled his eyes and put down the book he was reading.

"No luck on the uniform?" asked Benny, trying to make sense of Dean's cloudy expression.

"I... here," Dean shoved a bag at Benny.

Benny looked inside and found a six-pack of beer. Dean went to the fridge, around the blood, and opened the last bottle in there with his pocketknife. He cracked a can open for himself. "What's wrong, brother?"

"No suit, no patches. This town is incredibly small for something so goddamn historically significant. Also, everybody knows I'm gay."

“Word gets around.” Benny sipped and shrugged. Sam was covering his mouth and laughing.

"Shut up, Sammy."

"What's your problem, are you alarmed at their hospitality?" Sam's grin was incredibly cocky.

"Actually, yes. I had a clerk at the Circle K tell me how tolerant they are around here. I just wanted to buy more beer. It was fucking crazy." Dean flopped on the bed.

"Hey, man, they're trying." Sam shrugged.

"Bitch," he took a long drink.

Sam was unable to resist needling him. "You always struck me as the bottom," He sipped his own beer.

"Jesus, how can everybody know?" Dean ran his hands through his hair.

Benny shrugged. "Could be who you with. I look old enough to be your pop."

Sam actually flinched. "Oh god, _Ew._ No you don't."

Dean shotgunned a few gulps of beer. "Anyways. Benny, you'll hang around outside the casino. Call me or Sam if you see any vamps."

Benny shrugged. "If I can't help otherwise."

"It's gonna be an easy grab; I'll just yank their drives.  I can do it, and you can hang out with your phone on in case we need backup." Dean sat down. "Sam, you go in now and cut some lines so they'll call their IT people. I'll pose as them, show up a half-hour later, and be in and out before the real techs show up."

"Right now?"Sam whined, irritated.

He pulled out his phone and began to text. "Yeah, now. I'll give Garth a heads up in case somebody wants to call your ‘supervisor’ while you fuck their shit up."

Sam stood up, inadvertently looming over Benny. "How come I have to play the incompetent technician, again? I was going to go to Stanford."

"Because you look the part, Moose," Dean smiled.

Benny liked their conversations; even when adversarial. They still clearly had a fondness under the words.

"Jerk," Sam went to leave. "Oh, Benny?"

"Yeah?"

"Wait at least ten minutes before you go for it, right? My room's right next door, and I don’t want to hear it." He closed the door behind him and Dean sighed softly.

Benny smirked and waited until he heard Sam's door open and close as he petted the dew on his beer. He liked how the chill of the can in his hand felt colder than his own skin, and wondered if that was how he felt to Dean's fingers.

"Hey. C'mere." Dean patted the bed and Benny sat down, draining the rest of his beer in one gulp. He looked down and Dean was smirking, reaching for Benny's hip.  "I can't wait to leave this town."

"I got that feelin' too, brother." He put his hand on Dean's abdomen, feeling his muscles through his shirt.

“Sam treat you okay while I was out?”

He laughed dismissively. “Yeah, he’s behaved himself.”

Dean chuckled. "Take my damn suit off gentle, alright? I don't want to have to have it ironed."

Benny complied and straddled Dean’s legs to unbutton his shirt gently, pulling it open between every button, and snaking up the tight white undershirt to see his belly.

"Hey, what's with you?"

Benny sighed and continued his slow work. He guessed he was commenting on his obedience, or maybe he looked like he had a shadow on his face. "You know that I can hear your heart?"

As if on cue, it stuttered. "Uh yeah, I know."

"The first real, living thing I catch in fifty years, and it's you. I can feel your heartbeat better than anybody else out there."

"Are you being romantic, or serious?" Dean raised an eyebrow.

He had to laugh. "Both, I guess. Remember the inn we were just at?"

"Yeah."

"That day I took a nap, I woke up when you walked in the downstairs door. Didn't open my eyes for the other people in the inn... Just you."

"Weird." Dean pulled his hand to his mouth and kissed Benny's palm. "Drink your blood today?"

"Wasn't feeling like I needed it."

"Really? Does it go bad? I got you a lot."

"Not really. It can start to settle, but it’s good a week on ice." He pulled Dean's shirt open and kissed his chest.

Dean's skin broke out in goosebumps. Benny hummed and moved his hands down to his pants, looping the belt from the buckle and unsnapping the button.

"Not all the way right now, alright?" He touched Benny's forehead and locked eyes with him. "I don't want to be limping to this gig."

Benny kissed his hip as he pulled his underwear down along with his pants. He moved them both down to Dean's ankles and pulled his shoes off at the same time.

"Why aren't you more rough with me?"

“Because I..” He laughed softly, realizing that he’d almost blurted out something much too sweet, like _“I know what you need.”_ Instead, he said “You bruise so easy.”

“Oh, come on. You know I don’t care. Gimme the real reason, Benny.”

"Because once I get started, I don't know if I could stop." He pushed his thighs wide, looking down at Dean’s obvious interest. "Stay like that," said Benny, as he stood up to take his clothing off too.

"Yeah, but I trust you," Dean blushed a little. The admission had taken him a little time.

He kicked off his pants. "Dean, do you normally not trust the guys you fuck?" He knelt between his thighs and cupped Dean's cock, brushing it lightly with his cold fingers.

The hunter swallowed a moan. "Hey, you make it sound like I'm just letting guys bang me in truck stop bathrooms. That's _so_ not what I meant."

"I don't trust myself, Dean. It's... much worse here than in Purgatory." He straddled Dean's hips so he could rub and stroke their erections together. "But you, you make it better."

Dean's eyes slid shut. "What... what do you mean, worse?"

Benny grasped their cocks together and set a slow pace with his hand and a lazy roll of his hips. "So hungry, all the time. People everywhere," he said, closing his eyes.

The hunter groaned. "I remember. I remember how that felt." He pushed his hips up against the chilly friction.

Benny let him go to grab his sides and rolled them both over so Dean was on top. Dean grunted and pushed his hips against Benny, placing his hands on his chest. "You don't like being in charge, do you, Benny?" He rutted against him and made a little satisfied noise deep in his throat.

"I didn't say that." he stilled Dean's hips with his hands. “I just don’t always want to be a beast.” The hunter bit his lip and dug his fingers into Benny's shoulders. "Stay still," Benny said as he let Dean go, curling his hand around their erections and stroking them together again. Dean dropped his head to Benny's chest and lapped and nibbled at his skin.

"You could let me be in charge," his breathy words warmed Benny's skin.

"Tie me to a chair later, brother. After this is all done you can have me for a week without your job getting in the way."

"Always the job," he groaned as Benny's thumb caressed his tip.

Benny slapped his thigh with his free hand. Dean jerked in his hand and whimpered. The vampire groaned and slapped him again, moving his hand slowly, savoring the feel of the blood swelling under his flushed and straining skin. He controlled their pace, alternating between slaps and stroking as Dean blushed and winced on top of him.  Benny grinned at the sound of him.

Dean bit down on his skin sharply, and it was Benny's turn to gasp. "Careful, don't make me bleed." he still couldn't stop the shiver of lust at being bit by Dean.

Dean moved above him and Benny slapped his ass again. "I want you in my mouth, Benny." Dean lapped at his nipple.

Benny raised his hands to clutch his hair, tugging while the hunter groaned. "Have at it, then." He guided Dean to snake down his body, mouth open against his skin, tongue darting out to lap. He dragged his lips down the side of Benny’s cock until the vampire steered his mouth to the head and watched as it smeared wetness against Dean's chin. Dean lapped him, still teasing, so Benny jerked his hair and pulled his mouth down around him.

Dean moaned softly with his mouth stuffed full, his fingers tenderly exploring around the insides of Benny's thighs and sack. It was different- he wasn’t used to being the object of such sweet affection. He was sure that Dean could feel the goose bumps rising on his thighs. Benny just barely held back from bucking up into Dean's mouth. He still shifted his weight and tugged at the hunter’s scalp to keep him bobbing on his rigid flesh.

He grunted when Dean's finger prodded his hole and pulled him off his cock. "Dean."

Dean looked up at him, lips wet and blushing. "Benny, let me. I'll only put one in."

Benny gulped a little. "Yeah, okay."

The hunter slicked his digit with his tongue and then returned to pushing it in, taking his time with getting his lips back to Benny's dick as it arced and twitched against his cheek.

The pressure against his pucker wasn't anything new to Benny; but that had been a seriously fucked up weekend better left in the pile of unwanted memories, and he didn't enjoy it very much. He sighed a bit and wrapped his hand around his member, pushing it against Dean's cheek, the rasp of his stubble making it all the more enjoyable.

The finger worked inside him and Dean licked at Benny's thigh before he nipped again, which made Benny jump. "Stop clenching," murmured Dean.

"I ain't." He rubbed his fingers with his own precome and painted Dean's lips with it, then watched him suck them clean.

Dean nibbled Benny's fingers and pressed his digit upwards into Benny's body, relaxed, patient. But then Dean dropped his face down and licked where his finger was disappearing into Benny’s body, and that shot a jolt of arousal right up Benny's spine that he hadn't been expecting. Dean's tongue was so far down that his nose was under his balls, and the heat of his breath was shocking. The vampire moved his leg out, opening himself wider to Dean’s attentions.

Then Dean pulled out his finger and pushed it back in, and Benny gave up the moan he didn’t know he was holding in. When Dean stretched his fingers as far as he could go, he struck a bunch of nerves that begged insistently to be touched more, and quickly.

Dean let out a triumphant chuckle and lapped at the vampire's tight pucker, continuing to slide in and out of him at a leisurely pace.

Benny laid his head back and closed his eyes, hand still stroking. "That - it's a long way from what I want you to do, but damn it's nice."

Dean brought his head back up and opened his mouth on the tip of Benny’s cock. The vampire's eyes shot open and he looked down in time to see Dean's salacious wink. His tongue snaked at the head, and Benny removed his hand from his length to let Dean slide down all the way, past the tight constriction of his throat.

He bobbed on him, throat spasming as he determinedly swallowed on his tip, swiping his tongue on the shaft.

When Dean pushed his finger all the way in and held it there, pressing in soft little jolts on the bundle of nerves, Benny came like he was falling off a mountain, so sudden that he hissed through his fangs and nearly sat up. His hands framed Dean's face even as his vision went fuzzy. He would have liked to give the hunter warning but his orgasm had sprung from him quickly, harder than he’d ever have expected.

"God... God Dean," He said breathlessly, as he flopped back onto the bed, softly trembling as Dean untangled himself from his body and laid next to him, pumping his cock through his fist now, flushed and looking close.

Dean bit his lip. "I think you meant, ‘God damn, Dean.’"

Benny chuckled and rolled on top of the hunter again. This time he put one hand over the hunter’s nose and mouth and the other around Dean's cock. "Maybe."

Dean gave a nod and grunted, eyes sparkling eagerly.

Benny moved their hands together on Dean's member, watching his hunter's face redden. Dean’s heart hammered in every fiber of the vampire's' body. He let Dean breathe a half-gasp of air now and then before replacing his hand.

Benny removed his palm entirely when Dean's eyes looked unfocused and wet, allowing him to kiss and suck the air from Benny's dead lungs as he came on their hands.

Dean was often the first, and last to speak, "I...  better get... dressed, or something." He sat up in a daze and watched the vampire licking his hand clean. He froze and stared for a handful of seconds.

Benny noticed and paused. "Alright. Can I watch?"

Dean had great dimples when he smiled, Benny noticed for about the hundredth time. Dean started with his briefs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago


	6. Light My Fire

Sam and Dean high-fived in the hallway and tossed the keys up between them. "Good and broken, Dean," Sam disappeared back into his room. "See you later."

Dean looked back at Benny. "He does good work if it needs to be messed up." As he spoke, Sam could be heard grumbling through the door. Dean grinned. "Let's go."

 

* * *

 

Benny sat in the passenger seat watching the city lights as they streamed by, sliding in and out of sight beside the Impala, an occasional hum of the orange street lamps overhead audible to him alone. It was only a mile and a half before they were at the Grand Station Casino, so Dean dropped him off a block before the place with a quick pat on the thigh. "Didn’t want to leave you cooped up with Sam again. I know he’s getting on your nerves.”

“Really, Dean, he ain’t that bad.”

Dean squeezed his knee. “I'll call you when I'm about to head back. Shouldn't take twenty minutes. Oh, and grab me a burger, will ya?"

Benny nodded and took one of the credit cards from the glove box.

Dean smiled as he drove away. Benny knew that his toolbox contained a screwdriver, a hammer, and a gun taped to the underside of the smaller tool tray. The cables, zip ties, and cigarettes were mostly for show, Benny conjectured.

Benny took a walk around the neighborhood, somewhat disappointed that he couldn't pretend to be a technician along with Dean. Maybe Dean didn't want him to be bottled up with Sam and get to talking about their time in Purgatory, or maybe he was just trying to keep them apart so he wouldn’t have to hear any arguments. He found himself watching the puddles for the reflections of stars, an occasional car tire disturbing the cosmos.

He headed towards the sound of faint music while following the scent of cooking food, there was a garden running between a few buildings that he strolled through. He was disciplined and well fed enough not to dread human contact, but he still found himself hesitating. If only they sold hamburgers and french fries in automated vending machines. Benny could do without the constant pulse of so much human blood in his ears. A woman was sitting alone on a bench, and she looked at him nervously before she stood up to walk ahead of him.

Benny’s boots froze on the cobblestone walk. He knew her face. It had been almost sixty years since he’d seen this particular vampire, but he knew her.

Her hair was a bold, wild mane of dark curls, and her clothes were new; a vivid purple shirt and a pair of jean shorts, not the ragged cotton he'd seen her in last. Her high heels tapped on the ground as she turned away from him and started to slowly walk away.

He pulled out his phone and pushed the button, but between finding Dean's number and calling him, he heard her _living_ heartbeat.

Benny's nest had buried her deep in a grave north of this town because their sire had ordered it. They'd chained her in a dead man’s coffin and thrown her down under several inches of soil and paving stones, and now she was walking around Vicksburg, her skin warm and lungs breathing the open air.  It was impossible. He put the phone in his pocket, and started to walk after her.

Temperance never had a proper name that anybody ever knew of, and she hadn't been the oldest vampire he'd ever met -that was his maker. But from what he'd heard, she'd been made before the Civil War and refused to stay in a nest for most of her unlife.

When his nest had hit Vicksburg, it was because she'd been eating too many people and leaving a trail of bodies that a blind man could follow. How on earth she had a heartbeat now; a normal, living woman's heartbeat- was beyond him.

Benny watched her walk out into the road, and directly across the street to a row of old downtown buildings that made him hesitate. The lights inside and the sounds of music and human life made his skin crawl and teeth itch. He wasn’t really hungry, though. Just anxious to be the only cold, unliving thing moving among them.

Temperance looked back at him and then started to walk faster. Benny wondered if she recognized him… if it hadn’t been too long to remember who chained her down and threw her in the grave. Benny had wondered in the past about how that felt, to be starved under the earth for decades, but he thought now perhaps he could hazard a guess.

She walked into a bar called the Upper End Lounge and Benny jogged to catch her, almost a half-block behind. He opened the door to the bar and heard his phone ring out above the flood of zydeco music, but Tempe wasn't in sight at the bar, nor near the pool table, and she wasn't around over to the side where a band was playing.

Benny walked inside, senses flooded with the living people around him. He ignored the continued ringing of the phone call, even though it had to be Dean. He had to find her now, and find out why she was alive again. If there was even the vaguest chance that he could stop being a bloodsucking leech, he'd jump at it with both hands.

Benny edged towards the bar, looking towards the crowd of people, looking for a piece of her purple shirt or a shock of her dark hair. He started walking towards the bathrooms and the back, and then he saw her.

She pushed her way out of the bathroom and made a break for the back door at a sprint, feet now bare, heels discarded.

Benny rushed after her and through the exit door as well. He looked left and right in the vacant alley, but it was when the door swung closed behind him that Tempe jumped down on him from above.

Despite his strength, Benny went down underneath the sudden weight on his shoulders, and rolled himself forward to ram her against a cluster of trash bins. Benny stood up, expecting to see Temperance sprawled on the asphalt, or at least winded, but the woman was already up, sharp-boned fists darting in quick to hammer at Benny's face.

Benny dodged the first strike, but the second punch had enough force to catch him under the chin and spin him, and then Benny's head connected with the wall.

Great, so he was fighting something that was too _strong_ to be a person, and the rapid heartbeat in his ears meant that she certainly wasn't a vampire.

He should have picked the damn phone up.

Benny parried the barefoot kick to his ribs and punched Temperance  in the stomach before throwing her sideways. At least she wasn't any heavier than a normal woman.

Benny stood and bared his teeth. He then thought of the Beretta under his arm, and about how he never even moved to draw it. His instincts were just too firmly in place as a monster. At least he was fighting with something like him, even if she sounded and smelled human. He didn’t need to hold back.

Tempe smashed a bottle against the asphalt with a sharp crackling noise, and lunged forwards. She was fast, even compared to Dean, who'd taken out vampires capably in Purgatory without batting an eye.

Benny wasn't afraid of the bottle, not really. But he wanted a chance to ask her questions, not kill her, so he shoved Temperance down instead of grabbing her head and breaking her neck.

The bottle caught him on the thigh, ripping up through an artery that sprayed dark and cold blood down the front of his leg. If he were just a man it would have been enough to bleed him out.  Benny grabbed her so hard that his fingers sunk into the tender flesh of her tan arm and threw Temperance on her back, pushing a knee into her stomach with all his weight.

The woman was barely slowed, and zipped the razor-sharp edge of glass over Benny's achilles, right through the leather of his boot.

" _Capon!_ " Benny felt the calf muscle roll up under his skin, and his foot went limp and wobbly as Tempe rolled out from under him and ran away down the alley on bare feet, fleeing quickly to the main boulevard.

He stood up despite the injury, growling through his teeth and lurched after her, far slower than he needed to be. His foot dangled uselessly at the end of his leg, and it didn't take long to surmise that Tempe hadn't just gotten the one tendon; she'd nearly cut his foot clean off at the ankle. Benny stopped at the mouth of the alley and looked for her in the distance while he bled on the sidewalk.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and found it broken, the screen blank with a spiderweb of cracks through it. The alert light still blinked though, so maybe it would ring if Dean called, but he couldn’t call Dean. He'd have to walk all the way back to the hotel. Thankfully it was less than a mile.

 

* * *

 

Benny’s ankle was knit together enough to walk normally by the time he finally made the Ramada and took the elevator to the room. Nothing could be done about the state of his trousers. The lobby staff took one look at him and fled from the front desk, and Benny figured that he was a horror to look at. One woman dropped the phone on the desk as she shuffled quietly away, and the open line hissed.

His stomach lurched when he saw that their door was torn off the hinges. He calmed as soon as he heard Dean packing hurriedly inside. "Dean, what happened?"

Dean blinked at him and lunged across the room to grab him by his coat and shove him down onto the carpet. Benny didn't fight him at all, but grunted and grabbed Dean's wrist. The hunter smelled of fear. "What the fuck did you do to Sam, you son of a bitch?!"

"Sam? I just got here, Dean. Who did this?" He was smelling blood in the room, and it wasn't Dean's. A red smear coated the desk near the shattered window. “Where’s your brother?”

Dean slammed Benny's head into the floor and squeezed his eyes shut, one hand moving to the grip of his gun. He looked like he was contemplating a million frustrating options, face as cold and stony as it ever was in Purgatory. He didn’t draw the colt out of the holster, but instead sat up. "Shut the hell up and help me get our shit to the Impala."

Benny felt a bit dazed. He stood up, hearing distant sirens. He needed to drink something, fast.

A few moments later, and Dean heard them too. Dean hurled the cooler of blood into Benny's arms. "Go. Out the window. The car's right there."

He went to the broken frame, noticed it was scraped with blood on the rim, and looked back at Dean, who was strapping three duffel bags over his shoulder. He looked like a walking cloud of aggravation.

It was only the second story, so Benny hopped off the tiny balcony to the pavement below and waited while Dean ran down the emergency stairs and came out the fire exit near the car.

"Get in. Get in now." He threw the bags into the back seat and dove into the driver's side, reaching under his seat and fussing with a small, odd looking flare gun.

Benny sat down in the passenger seat, cooler of blood between his knees. He shut the door and the gun went off, a sharp pinch to the meat just under Benny's ear. His hand went up in reflex, but then his veins lit up in frozen-hot agony and he gasped.

Benny had been shot, stabbed, burned, and even beheaded, but nothing compared that to the shriveling pain that was a dart full of dead man's blood.

He heard Dean start the car as he clung to consciousness. Benny gaped like a fish, dimly aware that he was slumped against the door. He could see the hunter's silhouette in the night, brow drawn in a deep frown. " _Temperance,_ " he tried to tell Dean, but he wasn't sure his lips were moving.

He passed out when the sirens faded behind them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Capon: "A coward."


	7. Midnight Rambler

Benny had a bag on his head when he came to his senses and a sock shoved in his mouth. The bag smelled strongly of some perfumed herb, and the sock tasted like Dean.

He groaned, not surprised to find his hands chained each other and his legs bound with irons. He worked out that the chair he was on was modern, had padding on it, and seemed to have a sturdy enough frame that straining his body did nothing. He stilled for a bit and listened.

Dean was nearby. He could feel him but he wasn't quite close enough to hear his breathing. There were other hearts pumping too, but none were human. The smaller one, probably belonging to a snake or rat, was in the room with him.

Dean came closer before Benny had much of a chance to gather his thoughts. "Awake yet?" His boots descended creaking wooden stairs.

Benny just grunted; it was the only option, really.

Dean pulled the bag from his head but didn't take the sock out. They were in a cement-lined basement overgrown with vines. Parts of the floor above gaped with wood rot and exposed nails. Benny's head was pounding with the living heartbeat so close to him, and he knew he looked wrecked, covered with cold sweat.

Dean looked at him, coldly calculating. "I'm going to take this out, and you're going to tell me what you did to Sammy."

There was no way Dean could believe that of him, but seemed dead serious. Benny just blinked at him in bewilderment.

Dean had a machete on his hip, easily within reach. The hunter gingerly pulled the sock out of Benny's mouth.

He gulped and licked his dry lips. "Dean, I didn't even see him after you went to the casino."

The slap to his face was hard, but only hurt because Dean did it.

"When you turn on somebody, Dean, you really don't do half-measures, do ya?" He was unnerved by Dean's cold demeanor, and knew why Dean had brought him so far out that nobody else was nearby. He'd extend this for _days_ if he needed to. This was just the warm-up. Eventually Dean would start cutting, start digging deep to find the things inside that would make Benny howl.

Dean punched him this time, grunting.

"Don't bother, brother. You'll just hurt your hand," Benny's teeth were sliding down and he stubbornly pulled them back, refusing to give in. Dean hit him again and turned away, going to a bag in the corner where he pulled out a syringe and put it into a bottle of blackish blood.

"The bellhop saw you fighting Sam." He stood up. "Did you kill him, Benny?" Dean drew the blood out of the bottle into the syringe with a frighteningly steady hand, even with the split knuckles. "Did you think you could take his place?"

“Calm down, Dean… I wouldn’t hurt Sam, even if he came at me.” said Benny, as he tried to test the cuffs. He knew just how Dean could be when he had a vamp pinned and got to asking questions. Especially when he thought they were holding out on him.

Dean turned and walked back to him slowly. "I'm calm. God, I'm calm."

Benny closed his eyes. "I saw a woman, from a long time ago. She was a vamp then, but she was alive, Dean. With a heartbeat and. .. she was stronger than a human. I don't know how she is. I lost her."

Dean stood unmoving for almost a full minute, breathing steadily through his nose, pulse only a little faster than usual. Benny gulped, lulled by the rhythm.

His eyes shot open as the needle stabbed into his thigh and burned. Dean let it sit there as Benny whimpered, seeming to weigh the vampire’s words as the needle wavered, still full of poison blood. The hunter didn’t press the plunger down, just let it stand as a future promise.

It wobbled on his leg, leaking slowly into him. Benny gathered himself enough to silence his pained grunts. But he wouldn't look at Dean, even when he pulled a wooden crate over to sit facing him. He knew that Dean was going to hurt him a lot worse, and Benny didn’t want to beg him to get it over with, but it was at the forefront of his mind. Dean was _good_ at this. Dean was _trained_ for this. Going back to Purgatory was simpler, easier than surviving his wrath.

Dean’s voice was gravel. "Did you turn him over to some other vamps, or is he dead?"

" _Couyon_. I didn't hurt him, Dean."

The hunter’s hand reached out and hovered over the top of the needle. His jaw was square, the muscle jumping with tension that didn’t reach his voice. "The hotel staff saw you there, called the police on you."

"No. _No._ " If he had a heartbeat, it would have been pounding.

Dean pushed the needle's plunger down and Benny trembled, holding a scream back behind two sets of teeth. Then he calmly asked, "is my brother dead, Benny?"

He knew his pupils had shrunk to tiny points of blackness. Dean's blood roared in his ears. Benny lurched forward and snapped his jaw at the hunter, growling wordlessly.

Dean punched him again, hard, and shoved the bag back on his head.

The hunter retreated back up the stairs and away while Benny yanked on the cuffs, getting nowhere. The dead blood boiled its way through him. It didn't hurt as bad as it had in the car, but it stilled his limbs and froze his veins; after a minute or so, he couldn’t struggle any longer.

 

* * *

 

A few hours after dawn, Benny was roused by the feel of two human hearts near him. One was unmistakably Dean, but the other wasn't, and he found himself straining at the cuffs, making the chair creak with his exertion. Benny chewed madly at the bag, which tasted a little like cloves, or something else his _Defan Mamere_ cooked with.

Minutes of futility passed, and Dean came down the stairs again.

He removed the bag and Benny kept his head down, aware that his sharp teeth were protruding past his lips. The shimmering pinpricks of sunlight just made the shadows in the basement that much darker. Benny forced his teeth back with a groan.

Dean sat down across from him on the crate again in a fresh blue flannel and watched him twitch. "Garth was just here."

Benny looked at the needle, still in his thigh as it wobbled gently. "Dean, please, brother, I'm so hungry."

"Yeah, I can see that."

"I didn't do a thing to Sam," he spoke in a near-whisper.

"Garth said you wanted to know about Charles Lafitte, and his kin." He tilted his head down to see Benny's pale face.

Benny grimaced. "Don't. God, Dean, don't bring them into this."

"He's dead, Benny. So are his kids."

He bit down on his lip, shredding the skin. Benny knew that Dean had some kind of darkness in him, he'd seen a dozen shades of it in Purgatory; however he’d never expected to see it focused on him. His eyes stung with tears.

Dean touched his shoulder and the vampire jerked away. "Benny, I got to know where my brother is. Alive or dead."

Benny spat his own blood, what little remained of it, down his chin. "You never trusted me."

"You know what? I kinda did. Guess I'm an idiot." Dean sat back, arms crossed. He looked less than sympathetic.

Benny rocked a little in his chair, chewing on his lip. He recalled how Elizabeth had been so reluctant to talk about her folks, and she only talked about how the old farm had been sold but was still mostly there. He’d never meet his grandkids, or settle up with his son, who he hadn’t seen since being made a vampire, at the height of the depression. Benny shuddered and closed his eyes. Eventually, when it became apparent that Dean wasn't going anywhere, and would just watch him stew. "In 1953, my nest and I... buried a vampire named Temperance alive."

"Temperance, huh? Weird name."

"But I saw her last night, and she was alive, Dean. Alive- not a vampire."

“You mentioned her this morning.” The hunter shifted in his seat, and Benny avoided his gaze. He didn't want to look at him anymore.  

"We didn't kill her... I don't know why my maker didn't want her dead, it must have been... well, torture. Anyway, I followed her to a bar last night and she attacked me when I tried to catch her. She seemed human, but she was so strong. Cut me pretty bad."

Dean interrupted him then. "If you lie to me, Benny, I'll call Cas, and you won't be going to Purgatory."

Benny's chair squeaked as he strained against his cuffs. He felt like shouting that he'd welcome the angel, or even the machete through his neck, but he kept his temper in check. “Why ain’t you cutting on me, Dean? I know you want to.”

Dean’s teeth creaked as he clenched his jaw.

“Maybe you ain’t ever hurt someone that wasn’t asking for it, and it’s got you all tied up inside.” Benny managed a dry chuckle. He knew he was goading Dean.

"Where's this Temperance chick?"

Benny hissed, "Buried her in Beulah cemetery. Guess she got out."

Dean leaned in and pulled the syringe from Benny's leg. "Why not tell me before?"

"You didn't give me a chance. Remember when you shot me in the neck?"

"I mean when we came to Vicksburg. Didn't want to tell me about your history?"

He looked up at him, at the sunbeam catching on Dean’s hair and lighting it like a halo. "Because my history is everywhere. Please, now, if you're going to kill me, _brother,_ just do it."

"No."

Benny growled while Dean got up and walked back up the stairs again.  At least this time the bag wasn't on his head.

 

* * *

 

The shafts of sunlight marked the passage of time, scraping their way across the floor, suddenly jumping and fluttering when the wind picked up outside and sent leaves scuttering through their beams.

Benny worked at the chair when he felt lucid, but he was having trouble keeping his mind from wandering. His brain idled, in something akin to paralysis, and in those spans it supplied him with memories to replay again and again. It looked like sleep, or death, when his body shut itself down from hunger.

If he was very unlucky, the things he dreamed were from when he was alive. 

 

* * *

 

The Impala roared closer to the house before the engine cut out. Benny hadn't even realized that Dean had been gone, or heard the car leave. He'd scooted his chair away from the stairs and into a corner, but hadn't gotten much else accomplished besides forcing the manacles to cut his wrists.

He heard someone with Dean upstairs and fidgeted, immediately aware of how he was too hungry to stop himself from feeding on either of them. That was something to be grateful for the strong chains, he supposed -although he wasn't sure that he even wanted to refrain from feeding from people anymore. He _used_ to care about disappointing Dean.

Dean came down the stairs with the cooler of blood in his hand and saw where Benny had moved. He paused, staring at Benny. A lanky, nervous man followed him down and stopped at the foot of the stairs.

Benny leaned forward, nostrils flared and neck muscles standing out like cables under his grayish skin. The chair gave a soft creak. Dean put the cooler down and pulled out a packet of blood, his knife, and a small straw.

"Oh, right. Blood Capri-sun," said the young man behind Dean. Benny could smell a strong undercurrent of fear from him. It made his fangs ache.

Dean walked closer slowly and held the straw out until Benny took it into his mouth. He shut his eyes and drank, gulping it down in a few generous swallows.

"Garth, get me another one." Dean kept feeding him at arm's length.

Once Benny drained the third pouch, he started to feel a little less like a monster. His body was absorbing it quickly, but he was still hungry. He'd have the whole cooler if Dean let him.

Dean spoke to him when he changed straws again, "You gonna ask what's changed?"

Benny licked his lips with a bloody tongue. "Non."

Garth fidgeted, and Benny drank. Dean let him have eight in total before he closed the cooler.  Benny waited quietly, throwing Garth a prideful smirk.

Dean sighed and squatted down to sit on the cooler. "I have... made a huge mistake."

Benny had imagined exactly how it would feel to sink his teeth into Dean’s neck, and he _craved_ it. "So unchain me and make amends," Benny couldn't help the threatening edge his words had.

The hunter sighed. "We got a look at the video from the casino. It's not a vampire, Benny. It's a shifter."

He took a moment to process the implications. His hunger fought him the whole way, but eventually it sunk in. His hopes splintered. There wasn’t a former vampire, now among the living in Vicksburg.  Just another kind of monster. "That wasn't Temperance that I saw."

"Looks that way," Dean replied.

"I don't see how this changes much."

"Sure it does. You trailed the shifter as Temperance, she picked a fight with you, touched you, turned into you, and went straight for the hotel to try to take me and Sammy out."

Benny licked his lips. "I mean between you and me."

"Aw. Come on, man."

"I know what I _am,_ Dean, and I ain't a man no more. But I don't think there's a word for what you are."

Dean sighed and folded his hands. His knuckles were well-bandaged, and he picked at them.

Garth pulled out his phone to play with it in the awkward silence.

Benny shifted in his seat uncomfortably, twisting his hands in the cuffs. "If you hadn't looked at the tapes-"

"Drives," Garth interjected.

Benny stared at Garth until he went back to prodding his screen. "If you hadn't found out it was a shifter, you'd have kept going."

"I'm sorry," Dean said as he turned the chair around to face the wall and touched where the cuffs bound him up, pulling them free of Benny's healing skin.

Benny hung his head. "Uh huh."

"He's my brother, Benny."

"So was I," He looked up at the basement's holey ceiling.

Dean quietly uncuffed and unshackled him, and Benny brought his hands around to his front and stretched his legs a little before standing with glacial slowness. Benny turned around, and looked at Dean, struggling to keep his fangs from descending.

"Benny, look. I'm really sorry," Dean's hands were down at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling like he wanted to do something with them, but lacked the confidence. It was so unlike how the hunter had behaved when he was sure of Benny's betrayal that it was almost comical.

Benny looked at Garth, who had put away his phone in favor of putting his hand on his gun. "Is it true? Is Charles dead?" Benny asked, wiping his mouth.

Dean grimaced. "Benny, I'm sorry."

" _Shut up_. Garth, is he dead?"

Garth nodded, giant adam's apple bobbing as he gulped.

“How many grandkids did I have?”

“Uh.. two.”

“They gone too?”

“One died in 1998, the other in ‘06.” Garth’s voice was tight, still full of fear.

Benny closed his eyes, and turned back to the wall, putting his hands up to feel the cracks and bumps in it. "Go on now, leave me alone."

He heard Dean back away, and Garth's difficult clomping as he headed back up.

Dean paused at the foot of the stairs. As always, he had to have the last word. "Look. I'll leave you a phone and your stuff on the porch up there. Let me know if you want to catch up with us."

The vampire didn’t move or say a word. Benny waited until he felt him move away before he sat down on the floor of the basement in the dried mud to have a long think. Eventually he heard the Impala growl away down the dirt drive.  By the smell, a rainstorm was closing in before the sunset came.

Benny decided to stop and consider what he could do next. He could leave this place, and go anywhere. He knew his cooler would last him a week or so, if he was careful. North Dakota sounded nice, probably had a low population density still.

The shifter wasn't his fault at all; but maybe, if he thought about it hard enough, Tempe was. And she was somehow tangled up in this. Not to mention that Benny was still dwelling about Dean, and how he felt like he was somehow the one to blame for what happened. Which was stupid, and he knew it.

Dean had left him his M1935 and two new clips, loaded with what looked like silver bullets. Like the hunter already knew that this thing, the case... it had its teeth in him like a viper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Defan Mamere: "Sainted Grandmother"
> 
> *Couyon: "Stupid"
> 
>  *Non: "No" (do I really need to list this?)


	8. Empty Arms

 

Temperance had implied that their dreams could be prophecy, when vampires did dream. Benny wasn't sure how much weight to give her words; after all, she was one of the strangest vampires that he'd ever met. Even so- when she'd spoken, he had listened. Maybe because she was so pretty, but more likely because she was even lonelier than he was. He’d been sent to find her in May of ‘53, and it had only taken four days to get a lead on her whereabouts.

She'd taken over an abandoned house out in the wet bayou area northwest of the city, and let it rot. In the year they met, Benny had been the first to find her. It hadn’t been hard, the way she left kills up and down the highway, their cars often left to idle on the median. It seemed like she went through ten or so men a year, all at a time. Like a bacchanal feast, Benny’s maker had mused. The old man trusted Benny enough to send him inland on errands, so he went ahead of their nest to carve a way.

Her home’s screen door was on the hinges and latched, so Benny knocked even though he could have torn it down. There wasn’t a need to be rude, not yet. He could smell a fresh kill inside the place, somewhere.

She moved from where she stood against the rear wall of the place, fingers clinging to the hem of a pale sundress. Her skin was the color of old wood, almost gray and sun-parched, and her hair was wild, up at all angles around her head like a dark halo. The crown of her forehead was high, and smeared with blood.

"Hello," he'd said.

She stared at him blankly, head tilted. Eventually she came to the screen door and unlocked it.

"I'm Benny. What's your name?"

She looked him up and down from where she stood, top of her head level with his shoulder. "I'm Temperance." She took his hand and felt the skin of his palm, an oddly intimate gesture. It was something he was used to from older vampires, who seemed to view the bodies of others as shared property. His master did this often.

He watched her nails follow the lines on his hand and trace up his fingers. "Do you have a family, sweetheart?" he said, finally.

Her expression clouded over, and she dropped his hand. "I'm nobody's sweetheart."

"Well, I know you're a killer."

"You is, too." She walked away, barefoot over dry leaves and splintering maple floors.

"Not like you, though. You're just feeding yourself?"

She paused, looked back over her shoulder, and nodded. She swayed like she was drunk, but that couldn't be so. Her breath smelled like blood and lilacs, not bourbon.

"My family needs you gone then." he said finally.

She laughed at that. "They got you believing you're family?"

He shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. "It's easy. You could be too."

Tempe had an evil smirk. "I ain't never easy."

He shrugged. "I guess I warned you enough, then."

She crooked a finger towards him, and he followed, staring at her silhouette through the light cotton of her dress. "I been alone for a long time. Mostly 'cause I want it that way."

He stood close to her, and put his hand on her shoulder, feeling the muscles and bones under her dark skin. There was a strip of scars running under his thumb, looking almost like she’d been dragged over sharp rocks. "You don't like being alone, but you like our kind less, _non?_ "

"You gonna feel the same, before you die." She shrugged, slipping his hand off. "Take the boy when you go, if you so concerned about me leaving it out."

Benny looked down at a dead teenager, complete with wide staring eyes and askew glasses. He was half-dressed, a new and familiar black tattoo showing under the shirt, which was pulled down around his chest. "You bedding these boys you kill?"

"Mhm. Sometimes."

"Why?"

Tempe chuckled. "I get what I want."

Benny sighed, rolling his shoulders. "My maker's not the kind to lecture over your table manners. Next time I see you I might need to kill you."

She rocked on the balls of her feet. "You'll do what he tells you, until the day you don't. That day's gonna be soon; I dreamed it."

He picked up the body with a grunt and walked out the door of the house. She followed him to the porch and stood, leaning on an old railing, looking more alive than any vampire he'd ever seen. When he looked back from the drive, she was turning on her toes- dancing on the porch without any music, wearing a wide, distant grin. Maybe she would come around, but Benny doubted it.

It wasn't the last time he would see Temperance before his little tribe of merry cannibals descended on her, but the second time they met there wasn't much talking at all, and he didn’t like to think about it. Soon after that he was shoveling black delta dirt down on her while she shrieked, chained in a coffin.

 

* * *

 

Benny awoke in the boarded-up post office he’d chosen to hole up in, feeling frozen to the ground. He shook out the stiffness in his bones and sat up off the floor, reaching for his cooler and a packet of blood to sip. He stared at the graffiti on the walls of the dirty sorting room. It was time for him to get a move on, even if the sun was still up.

Benny leaned against the wall and pulled out the new phone Dean had left him, playing with the buttons until he figured out how it worked.

After mistakenly selecting something called Flappy Bird, he managed to get it back to the "home" screen and found his phone book. All the numbers he had were still there.

Dean's multiple phones  went to voicemail, and only one rang before that. He left one message on the most commonly used line. "I'm still in town. Call me." Benny was almost grateful that he didn't answer. He wasn't prepared to have a conversation anyway.

Garth's phone picked up on the third ring, but it was skippy, and garbled.

"Garth? Hey. It's Benny. I'm still in town. I .. ah, think I want to help."

He heard a static chatter and hiss, then a thread of Garth's voice. "Benny? Look, the -- " the line cut out with a snap, then crackled on again, enough for Benny to hear Garth say "-underground."

"Are you with Dean?” Only a soft hiss responded. “Garth?"

The sound went dead with a robotic beep and Benny made a face at his phone.

He sipped at the cold packet of blood and fiddled with the credit card still in his pocket from just one night ago, contemplating just how long ago that seemed. The night he was supposed to get Dean a burger. He decided he needed to get more ice for his cooler and maybe visit the city hall, and look for some maps.  

Daylight wasn't the worst thing to have to deal with, if he kept his hat on and his collar up. He stole a rickety old pickup truck that had spare keys under the mat, inwardly apologizing. He drove out to a 7-11 first, bought a bag of ice for the cooler and found himself nervously handing over the plastic, expecting that it wouldn't work.

"William... Wallace?" said the clerk, reading it off the card.

"Ah, yep." Benny was already picking up the bag of ice, trying to be casual. "Hey... directions to city hall?"

The woman handed over the card with a smile Benny might describe as strange. "Yeah, it's on Walnut and Crawford, go down back the way you came."

"...Next to the Ramada?"

"Oh yeah."

He hefted the ice under his arm. "Thanks."

It wasn't great news, that he'd have to go back near the same place where a shifter _-wearing his face-_ had been seen attacking Sam. But the records they'd have in the offices could help in finding any underground spaces in a place where there weren't enough people to see something strange going on. If he couldn’t help Dean directly, he could at least put him on the right path with some research.

Vicksburg was an old town, with a lot of history, and he guessed from just the tourist signs in the place, that was part of the draw nowadays. If he ended up being recognized, well... he still moved faster than most humans so he could always just run away. Still, he knew this was just an excuse. He needed to believe that if nothing else, Dean would be contacting him in a couple of hours, or Garth would, after he got topside. He could keep his nose clean as long as he thought that he still had some reason to, and Dean, whether they liked each other or not, _was_ that reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Temperance:
> 
> (Art by me.)


	9. In the Dark

He parked the truck near the courthouse and stared across to the Ramada for a minute before chancing it and getting out of the cab. He walked along Walnut street, and bent to look at a newspaper stand as a police cruiser slid down the lane.

There was a window out in the basement of the army building just across the street, which appeared to be out of use. When he was last in town decades ago, it had been the county courthouse.  The missing glass was low to the ground, right on the level of the sidewalk, and had been blocked up with a piece of plywood. The edge looked scuffed, like it had been rubbed against the pavement. He swallowed and calmly walked over to it.

The building was right across the street from where Sam was taken, and it had, at the least, a basement. He stood on the sidewalk and waited until the street cleared enough for him to quickly crouch beside the wall, pull the plywood up, and slip underneath to drop down into a low brick basement. Benny’s head nearly brushed the ceiling. He reached back and pulled the plywood back to where it was, tight against the side of the building.

Benny crouched on the corrugated steel floor and listened- the sounds of the hissing pipes, water pumping above his head and a thrumming furnace somewhere under him, all indicated that the building had a sub-basement below where he was. He listened carefully for heartbeats as he moved out of the room into what looked like a benign storage area, there he found some stairs, locked with a barred gate, that descended under an older brick and mortar lintel.

His eyes were incredibly keen to certain things in the near-pitch black, things a human would never have been able to see. The railing behind the gate had a smear of blood on it, and when he touched the lock, he found that the bolt had been broken, and the gate was just resting where it was supposed to be latched. He carefully squeezed by and smelled the smear of red, finding it dry and a day or two old. Could have been Sam, maybe. He quietly stepped through the basement and stopped, listening again. No heartbeats, but Benny did feel a cold belch of stale air coming from the east side of the building, ahead of him.

Benny found a door with a few rot-holes in it down low; it hadn't been replaced after the rats started gnawing at it. There was an old roll-top desk holding the door closed. He shoved it aside as quietly as he was able, and pulled the door open slowly, feeling the chill of the fetid air inside. He had to stoop, but now the walls were brick, and older. He figured that this part had never been remodeled from when it had been a courthouse, and that meant that nobody was ever down here from upstairs.

He stilled once he had the door shut behind him, and listened carefully until he felt a thready, faint heartbeat up ahead of him. There was a strange smell too. He rounded a corner in the narrow hall and found a gooey, rotting pile of skin and hair. There were teeth in it, clumping to a piece of bloody inside-out skin and covered in a pinkish slime with veins of blood running through it.

The vampire knelt. He knew the basics of shifter life-cycles but nothing really of the practice of skin-changing. Things worked differently for them in Purgatory, and they didn’t shed. He refrained from touching it but wondered a little at the fingernails and perfect freckled ear he saw in the muck.

That gave him pause. As strange as it was, he knew that ear. He put his finger on it then, and finding it rubbery and cold, withdrew suddenly. It was, without a doubt, Dean's ear.

The shifter had impersonated Dean, then, but for how long? Benny stood and looked down at the awkward little flesh-puddle, then continued along the hall until he was cloaked in near-total blackness. Human eyes couldn't see, so he had to assume the resident was a monster.

Ancient, pitted bars along his left side gave him pause. The small cells were lined with flaking paint and their locks were busted out- but they smelled of people, and almost glowed with blood.

In the seventh cell he found Sam Winchester, unconscious and naked.

He used his pocketknife to cut the zip-ties that held the bars together and kept Sam in. He guessed that the boy would have given a break-out his best shot, if he'd been awake. Benny crawled in, over him, despising the parts of himself that responded to Sam's bite wounds, and turned him gently on his side so he could work on his handcuffs and break the lock with his blade.

Sam shuddered himself awake and raised his head, dark hair matted with blood. "Dean, no," he slurred.

"Shh, quiet Sammy. It's Benny."

He didn't know why he'd expected that to calm Sam, in retrospect. The kid summoned enough strength to kick him off and squirm back into the corner of the bare cell. His eyes were wide and wet, and his whole body shook.

If he hadn't drank his fill earlier, Benny might have been tempted by the predatory instinct to bite Sam.  "I'm gonna get you out of here, now."

"It’s n… not Dean." his head wobbled and his dripping eyes slid shut.

Benny edged over to him and elicited only a soft whine from the large man as he turned his shoulders gently around again to get at the cuffs.

Sam didn't respond again, even when Benny freed one of his hands and pulled his arms around to his front. He found a handprint burn low on Sam's hip that was a match to the one on Dean's shoulder and filed the little fact away, resolving to wonder about it later, after he'd gotten Sam out of the basement and to a hospital. He suspected from the marks on Sam's thighs that something had done more to him than just drink his blood, but avoided thinking about it too deeply. He pulled off his peacoat and wrapped it around Sam's middle before picking him up and backing out of the cell.  

He pushed his way back through the rotting door and up the stairs into the basement of the adjoined Army building. He shoved the plywood aside and pushed Sam through the empty window gently, pausing when the taller man groaned and rolled over in the midday sunshine. He didn’t wake up.

Benny heard a shriek as he climbed out alongside the naked hunter. He could already hear someone shouting about the man on the sidewalk, and he figured they were calling the police right then. His skin was already feeling the burn of the sunshine, so he hastily decided to grab his jacket and cover himself. The worst thing that would happen to Sam now, was an ambulance ride to the hospital, rather than a harried trip in the cab of a stolen pickup.

He patted Sam's back, knowing he probably wouldn't thank him for this, and ran away down the street. 


	10. Stranglehold

The area under the courthouse would probably be searched by the local police, so Benny knew he had to stay away from there, and pray that the cops didn't come into contact with the shifter, or worse, Tempe herself. He wished he’d had more time to look through the place, but Sam’s injuries had been too serious.

The worst part was knowing that the shifter had somehow gotten to Dean. He rang his phones a few times to be sure, then Garth, who didn't pick up either. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach that knotted on itself when he thought about Dean going through what had happened to Sam. Benny's brain was pretty good at conjuring images to haunt himself. He thought of what Dean would do, if he were in Benny’s place, trying to work a case he couldn’t see the shape of.  Maybe he could take a pair of pliers to some random vamp’s fangs to try and get a lead, or just sit in a bar and drink their entire selection of whiskey, scotch, and bourbon. Neither of those things really fit Benny’s style.

Benny returned to the stolen pickup and climbed in, and drove away from downtown, figuring he'd park at a casino and see if anything odd came or went.

Garth called him ten seconds after he parked. Benny held the phone against his head. “Hello?”

"Um.. hi? I guess." Garth sounded awkward, it seemed to be just the way he was made.

"Hey. Look, I just pulled Sam out of a basement. Is Dean around?"

"So... um... Look, Dean took off six hours ago. He really... well, he's upset. Wait a minute- you got Sam?"

"Ambulance took him to the hospital. He was in a basement of the old courthouse, Next to the Army Engineers building. I'm guessing there's police everywhere there now."

Garth whistled. "Look, I think I'm leaving town. You probably should too."

"You bailing on the case? Is the damn thing dead?"

"No, but I... well, Dean hit me."

Benny frowned and grunted. "That don't sound like Dean."

"Well... dumb things were said, okay?"

"Garth, I found one of them old... skin piles when I found Sam. The shifter was wearing Dean around for a while." He slouched down in the pickup and watched the casino entrance.

Garth huffed. "Well you know they have all the memories of the person they're copying. And Dean... well... do you think it was the shifter that chained you up, too?"

Benny grimaced. "Nope, that was definitely Dean."

"How do you know?"

"I know Dean," he shrugged.

"Okay, so... I should try to find him. If I find his car, he's probably close."

Benny nodded before realizing that Garth couldn't hear that. "Yeah, got it. Can you find the car? Because I got no earthly idea."

"Give me an hour, yeah."

"Call me when you do, I want to see this through."

"Look, uh, Benny. No offense but you're a flippin' _vampire,_ man. I'm more comfortable just going it alone."

"Just call me anyway. You know it's not me that's done this, right?"

He sighed. "Yeah, but... okay. I'm just going to say okay, and maybe I'll come to my senses, but if I don't... I'll call you when I find the dang car."

He growled a little. “I ain’t quitting this thing until Dean’s okay and Temperance is gone.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t pop a fang.”

"Adios, friend." He hit the little red square on his screen and sighed. It was going to be a long hour.

 

* * *

 

Benny pulled up at the address that Garth "texted" to him, later than he'd like, circling around the block due to missing the dirt turnoff that was concealed by a huge patch of kudzu. His hands were sizzling in the sunlight but there wasn't much to be done about that. He drove slowly up the drive, around the kudzu mound, and saw the abandoned hospital that Garth said was there. He rolled slowly over the potholes and brought the truck to a shuddering halt next to the Impala, and Garth fidgeting next to it.

"Afternoon, Garth," he stepped out of the pickup, pulling his lapel up to shield his neck, and headed for the shade of an old overhang in front of Dean’s car. He patted a headlight, fondly, and let his hand rest on the warm hood. "Where'd you park?"

"The south drive, where they're logging." He pointed off into the trees, down a dirt road. He had a small duffel with him. "Do you have silver bullets?"

"Yeah, loaded in my gun." Benny looked down, and noticed a machete on Garth's hip. "How about you?"

"Silver buckshot, and in my Glock, too." Garth's adam's apple was just about the most animated thing on him. Benny had to stop himself staring, or he'd probably think he was about to lunge for his throat.

"You sure he's here?"

"Yeah, GPS, man."

Benny nodded. "Guess I'm gonna head in first."

"I'll stick close. I don't want to get separated in there," Garth added, jittery.

"Yeah, these monsters like the dark." Benny's boots crunched over broken glass as he walked in ahead of Garth and towards the middle of the hospital, pausing every now and then to stand still and listen. He couldn’t detect any heartbeats in the building yet.

Behind him, Garth raised the flashlight, and Benny turned to keep an eye on him, wary of the machete in the holster. He didn't know Garth very well at all, but he did know that the Impala's engine was still warm, and that Sam had probably succeeded in shutting off the GPS device.

Yet he couldn't be totally sure. With the vast gap in his knowledge of modern things, he was barely able to navigate his phone, so maybe the pit of suspicion was just Benny being paranoid. He couldn’t know. Not until Garth tried to turn on him. "Sam shut it off, didn't he? That... GPS tracker?"

"Yeah, but it has a remote on switch." Garth shrugged. "I can turn it on from my laptop."

Benny was out of his depth. "How long ago did Dean park the car here?" Benny continued forward through a hallway of graffiti, broken glass and cracking plaster. The floor creaked so he walked close to the wall.

"Dude, I don't know, he parked it before I looked for the signal, it hasn't moved."

"So... at least an hour." Benny glanced back at Garth, only getting a beam of light right in his eyes.

Garth didn't move the flashlight. "Yep."

Benny turned, hand rising nonchalantly to find the butt of his gun.

"Don't," said Garth, shifting to the middle of the hallway, "-Or you'll never see Dean again."

Benny turned to look down the flashlight beam at Garth, hand hovering, undecided. "It's _you._ "

"In the flesh," he snickered. "Now, if you want to be able to see him, y'know, before I let my pet drink him dry, you take your gun off really slow, and kick it over this way."

The vampire growled, taking an age to pull his gun out and place it on the ground. He kept the spare clip, and his knife, which he knew was ultimately useless against the skin-changing son of a bitch that was wearing Garth.

"Turn around, and walk to the stairs ahead on the left. Keep your hands on the back of your head. Don't look back."

Benny complied, taking slow, deliberate steps, listening behind him. Still no heartbeats other than the one emanating from the shifter with him, but he still thought that maybe Dean was in a far corner, below, just out of range of his ears. "Is Garth with him?"

"Shut up."

Benny rolled his eyes and plodded down the hollow metal stairs. The building had had a retrofit sometime in the 70's and so the decor was all olive linoleum and steel railings. At the time when he’d been killed by his own nest, this place would have been brand new, and now it rotted, the peeling floor crunching under his feet.

He paused at the bottom while he listened to the shifter come down the stairs. When he reached the middle, Benny turned and started walking without being directed, and the thing wearing Garth growled at him.

"That way."

The vampire paused before complying. Benny was in the complete darkness now, and the flashlight only irritated his eyes. He wondered if the shifter could see in the pitch black. Most of the things that ended up in Purgatory could, so he was just using it to keep Benny from looking back.

The basement stretched on ahead of him, and still no sound. "They're not here, are they?"

Leather hissed behind him, and the flashlight clattered to the floor. Benny ducked the machete’s blade reflexively and sought refuge past a doorway. The shifter laughed with Garth's voice, turning his irritating chuckle into something infinitely worse. "Oh come on, Benny, it's not like you don't know where you're _going._ "

He followed the vampire, kicking the maglite through the door to illuminate the large room. A rotting industrial lift sat at the opposite corner, and there were hundreds of bolts cemented to the floor, once holding large machinery. Benny was already looking at the elevator to see if he could crawl up the inside of it. It looked like he could work at the bent metal to open the doors, but not before Garth got to him.

He settled and turned, teeth bared and fingernails extended.

"Oh, you are every inch the beast Dean thinks you are, aren't you?"

"Where are you keeping him?"

A perverse version of Garth's laughter bubbled out of the shifter. "Don’t worry, he’s cozy with my cute little vampire. I'm actually disappointed, though. When I wore your body to fuck him, he could tell."

Benny's stomach lurched at the thought. His vision was always tinted just a little reddish, but now it began to pulse with maroon. A primal sound rose out of his throat and echoed in the cement room.

The shifter continued, unimpressed by Benny’s growl. "Garth, though.. well, he already thinks y'all are stone loco...But you took Sammy from me." He shrugged, smirking. "So I ain’t gonna offer you amnesty, _brother._ "

Benny lunged for Garth, deftly dodging the swing of the machete. The singing steel zipped back towards his neck right away, but came up short again as the shifter stumbled on a bolt on the floor. Benny punched him squarely in the face, vindicated by the sound of a cracking bone.

His opponent recovered his footing and spun, wildly hacking at the vampire with the blade, managing to nick his shoulder once.

Benny had faced him unprepared before,  but now he knew to expect his speed and strength. He gambled and stepped under the blade as it descended, and let it sink deep into the flesh of his trapezius, colliding with his scapula.

He grabbed the thing wearing Garth by the collar and held on as it jerked at his blade, grunting. It was stuck firmly in the vampire’s bones. Benny brought his face close as he shoved the boy down onto the ground,  his left arm twitching and nearly paralyzed. His teeth sank into the shifter's neck and he groaned at the involuntary shiver that it brought, even as the blood singing over his tongue made him want to gag. It was like drinking a pot of week-old coffee. Bitter, and stagnant.

His own silver bullets ripped through him, fired by the shifter in desperation. The monster’s skin was peeling back to reveal something new, slimy and pink. Benny laughed, blood bubbling around the seal of his lips, continuing to drink his fill of the barely palatable creature.

The gun clicked between them and Benny finally raised his head, blood spilling onto his shirt and mingling with his own from his shoulder and the grisly cluster of bullet holes. Silver didn’t do anything to him that a bullet wouldn’t, but it still _hurt_.

Benny straddled the shifter and pulled at the blade wedged in his bone. It was hard to budge, bone already knitting around it. He grinned toothily at the shifter. "Looks like you're empty." It was strange that it was still alive, yet was totally drained. Its heart fluttered audibly. Benny dislodged the machete from his scapula and drew it out gingerly, considering the body under him whose skin bubbled and flaked. He wasn’t going to be able to haul him anywhere else without a struggle.

Benny stabbed the thing in the chest, making it wince. "Tell me where you put Dean."

It hissed, trying to push him off. "You're out of bullets, you can't kill me now."

Benny chuckled. "Silver to the heart, right?" He pulled out his other clip from his breast pocket, and sprang the empty one from the Beretta. He slammed it home and racked the first round into the chamber. "What happens if I do this?"

The look on the thing’s face was worth it. Benny let him look down the barrel before he shot him in the head, splattering his brains on the floor. Then he stood, looking down on his work, picked the shifter up by his shirt, and dragged him slowly back the way they had come. It was difficult, and his chest still hurt while it knit back together. At least the shifter wasn’t moving.

He found Dean's keys in the pocket of Garth's pants, opened the trunk of the Impala, and bound the shifter's hands behind him with a pair of cuffs he found, conveniently labeled "silver." Then he put the limp body in the trunk under Dean’s hunter kit and closed it tight.

He pulled his cooler and bag out of the truck and set them on the front seat, abandoning the stolen Ford. Next stop was the river, to clean some of the blood off.


	11. Chauffeur Blues

Benny touched Sam's foot through the blanket in the hospital, and it roused him instantly.

"Hey, _C'est moi_." He figured it was obvious even in the dark room. It was night now and the rain had started, pattering on the window softly. He set Sam’s spare duffel down on the food tray.

Sam's fingers clenched the rail of the hospital bed. "Benny?"

Benny nodded, knowing Sam could probably just make out his silhouette. "I'm sorry I had to leave you for the ambulance. Couldn't run and carry you, and well... can't mend you neither." He patted the larger man's leg through the thin blanket, feeling the warmth emanating from him.

The kid actually gulped. "Can you turn on a light?"

"Non… I had to sneak in here. I hope to sneak you out."

Sam shifted in the bed which caused him to wince in pain, but spent a few breaths with his eyes squeezed shut, working back to the composed shell he maintained most of the time. "Where's Dean?"

"Shapeshifter took him and Garth."

Sam looked out the window and bit his lip, obviously thinking about what was happening to his brother and friend. Benny took his hand away. Sam cleared his throat. "There was a vampire too, Benny."

"Yes, I know. And I know her. So we need to get a move on, before she bleeds Dean dry."

"You know her?" his tone was a bit accusatory. "When were you going to mention this?"

"Sam, look. My nest buried her more than fifty years ago. I didn't expect she'd get out. Not to mention she didn't exactly have good instincts. She's… not very good at being a vampire." He looked out at the rain, almost unable to see past it.

"She drank a lot from me." Sam rubbed his face.

"I know. But I think I need your help. I have the shifter in the trunk of Dean's car. It was driving the impala around- you might not want to tell Dean about that."

Sam blinked. "Did you find the vampire? Do you have any silver?"

"She's still loose. Haven't laid eyes on her yet." He shrugged. "I have some silver bullets left. Plus whatever's left in the Impala."

"Is the shapeshifter dead?"

"No, just ventilated his brain. I figure it's going to put itself back together soon, and then we can ask some questions."

Sam huffed, struggling to sit up. Benny came over to help him and was waved back. "Look... Benny, just... don't touch me right now."

Benny stood with his arms at his sides, at a loss about what to say. "Just trying to help."

Sam closed his eyes, seeming to count to ten before answering. "Look, I'm going to try to call Cas, so I can do something about the monsters that have Garth and my brother. "

The vampire scratched the scruff on his chin. "Gotcha. Do you want me to stay?"

"What do you think?" Sam's jaw flexed as he spoke through clenched teeth, and his eyes were sharp and wet.

"Here’s a change of clothes. They were in the back seat. I'll... just be out by the car." Benny slipped out of the room and down the hall, holding his hat in his hands until he got outside. He put it on again, not that the rain bothered him.

Benny sat down in the Impala and absorbed the scent of the interior, smelling Dean more keenly than anything else. The thing in the trunk groaned. It was about time; he'd been in there for a few hours. The vampire hoped Dean would forgive him for the mess that was drying underneath the shifter, monstrous blood tainting Dean's baby.

Minutes dragged on. It was times like this, when Benny was just waiting, that he wished he smoked. He traced the edge of the steering wheel.

A quick flapping noise startled him, and Castiel was sitting in the passenger seat.

Benny pressed his back to the door and reached for the handle.

"Don't run." His voice was crushed gravel. It vibrated through his bones.

The vampire froze, looking at Castiel's face out of the corner of his eyes. He gulped. "If you kill me now, Sam's going to have to find Dean by himself."

"I'm not here for your head, Benny. I'm here to apologize."

He noticed the angel's posture, his hands folded and fidgeting in his lap. It weirdly reminded him of Dean.

Benny relaxed a little. "All right."

"I'm sorry I nearly killed you." Castiel swallowed. "I can't explain my actions right now."

"Buddy, I wasn't asking."

"I can't know where Dean is. My warding hides him from even myself. But Garth... is under the Diamond Jack casino."

“Then why ain’t you going to get him?”

Castiel looked at him, holy heat passing over Benny with his gaze, and then he vanished.

He blinked a few times before settling back into the driver's seat and turning the key in the ignition.

Dead man or not, Benny still nearly jumped out of his skin when Sam knocked on the Driver's side window. Benny composed himself and rolled it down.

Sam bent over to look in at him. "I'll drive." He seemed completely fine, if a little damp. He was dressed, too.

Benny unlocked the door and slid over the seat onto the passenger side.  "You know where we're going?"

"Yep. Cas said to hurry." Sam closed the door as he wrenched the transmission into drive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C'est moi: "It's me."


	12. Whipping Post

Benny folded his hands on his lap and blinked at the persistent neon of the casino. It buzzed in his eyeballs somewhat painfully. "We've got to get in underneath," he said, squinting.

Sam nodded, seeming like he'd rather talk to the empty seat than speak to Benny.

He tried to ignore Sam's attitude. It was his brother's life on the line, after all, so he had a really good reason to act like he was. Benny broke the uneasy silence again. "You've been in this one?"

"No, we took the tapes from a different place. The shifter might have been in more than a few casinos. I've got no idea what's down there." Sam sighed. "Do you know where the silencer is?"

"Maybe in the kit box in the trunk?" Benny shrugged and Sam got out of the car in the light drizzle. The vampire looked in the rear view and got out too, following him just in case the shifter managed to hop out, though he doubted he'd be that spry. Benny'd taken a shot in the skull before like he gave the creature, and it hadn't been something he bounced back from quickly.

Sam screwed a suppressor onto one of his handguns and pulled up the false bottom under their kit rack. He frowned slightly at the trunk's contents before pointing the pistol directly at Benny and shooting him through the heart. The dull pop was a lot quieter than Benny had expected.

Benny stumbled and sat down, hand coming up to cover the wound. "Sam! _Damnit,_ boy. That hurts." His teeth popped out and he forced them back in with a grimace.

Sam shrugged. "That answers that." He pointed the gun at the shifter in the trunk. "How do we get in there?"

Benny's own voice came out of the trunk. "Sam, you have to let me go, it isn't me."

Sam had always seemed like a nice kid. If anything, Dean's stories about him painted him as a trustworthy person, maybe a little haphazardly sentimental. But then Sam smiled at the shifter, and Benny felt a chill from where he sat on the curb.

"I know it's you, because I just shot the real Benny through the heart and he’s still here. Where is my brother?"

The shifter grunted. "Fuck you."

Sam put a round in him somewhere, and the bullet went through and punctured the trunk's lining, then ricocheted on the pavement. Benny blinked at the blood that dripped out under the Impala, and his doppelganger made a few soft grunting noises that made the vampire feel weirdly uncomfortable. Benny stood up. "Sam."

Sam glanced over to him, eyes flicking to the new bloody hole he’d added in Benny's shirt. "What?" Sam's voice was resentful. He probably wasn’t going to apologize for shooting him.

"Just shoot him in the heart and get me down in the basement. I can hear Dean if I'm close enough."

"What do you mean 'hear' him?" Sam’s frown illustrated just what he thought of that. He looked back down at the shapeshifter and closed the kit box and trunk lid on top of him.

"I know his heartbeat." Benny wondered if Sam would shoot him again. He figured it could go either way.

The hunter squinted down at him, weighing his words. "Another profound bond, huh?"

Benny was trying to think of how he'd heard the phrase before. Probably from Dean. He nodded hesitantly.

Sam took the silencer off and put the gun in a holster, then dug through the trunk’s kit to find a couple of flashlights. "There's got to be a way in underneath the Casino."

"Why do you think that?" Benny pulled his jacket closed over the hole in his shirt, the skin underneath already healed for the most part. He thought the bullet might be inside him still, against the inside of his shoulderblade. It itched. He could hear the shifter whimpering under the tool kit in the trunk and stayed quiet about his discomfort.

"He's not going to be able to drag my brother and Garth past any kind of gambler, even as drunk as they get in these little casinos."

"Water access." Benny looked towards the blinking lights reflecting on the river. Dean could be less than a few hundred yards underneath and he'd never know.

"I'll bring the bolt cutters and the crowbar," Sam pulled them out and closed the trunk. "Your eyes are better right now, take a look around."

Benny smirked. "There's a truck across the street with a ticket on the windshield and a manhole cover underneath it."

Sam looked over. "That'll do. How long you been hunting, Benny?"

"I think it's been five days." Benny headed over to the pickup and looked past it at the casino. "Depends on your definition, I guess."

Sam huffed. "Break the window and shift it into neutral?"

"Nah." Benny opened the unlocked door and released the parking brake, then rolled it backwards. "We're good." Then he bent over to pull up the manhole cover with a single finger shoved into the vent hole. He knew he was showing off a little, but didn't care too much. He didn't know how he'd ever earn Sam's respect without dying for it. "I'm gonna just jump down."

The expression that Dean referred to as "Sam's bitchface" followed him down into the sewer. He landed in water up to his ankles that smelled like it was directly from the river. He looked down the tunnel he'd dropped into and saw nothing, then looked up into the beam of a flashlight Sam was shining at him.

"It's big enough to walk down here." He moved up under the street a little until he saw a corner where the tunnel turned towards the casino. "Sam, get down here, it heads right for the place."

Sam dropped his flashlight, and cussed under his breath. Benny stayed still for a little bit and listened, not expecting his stomach to lurch at the feel of Dean's heartbeat. There it was, thumping distantly through the concrete walls and echoing tunnels. Dean was here, somewhere close enough to be felt. He was alive, and Benny could finally admit that the possibility of Dean being dead had crossed his mind more than a few times.

He walked down the tunnel warily, straight towards the casino and the sound of his hunter, and then looked back reluctantly when he heard Sam finally sloshed in the brackish water after him.

"He's here." Benny said at him, before breaking into a run.

Sam ran after him, which was probably a lot more dangerous for the human hunter, but Benny wasn't about to slow down to tell Sam to watch himself on the metal grating and slime-coated cement floor. Stairs went up a couple of feet, lifting out of the water and revealing an ages-old coat of yellow and black-striped hazard paint. There were water marks from old floods.

He stopped once he came to a room filled with the smell of Dean. Lurking in the corner was some pump machinery that seemed to be continuously hissing.  There was blood splattered and crusted on the south wall, and a rope that was tied to a thick pipe above, that was taut and leading down into an access hole where river water sloshed lazily. There were a few plastic-wrapped bricks by the bloody wall, looking a bit out of place with how clean they were. He sniffed the air and listened for his hunter, hoping to get a direction on the echoing thump of his heart.  Behind the pump, maybe.

Sam tripped and got back on his feet, coming in. "Jesus, Benny, you could be walking into a trap."

"We don't have time to worry about that."

Dean's heartbeat was close, but it was Garth's voice that rang out in the dark. "Hello? Sam, help?"

Benny rounded the pump machine and saw a grate through which he could see the silhouette of Garth and behind him, Dean. They both looked like they were tied to the ceiling by their wrists, forced to stand or dangle for hours. Sam pushed ahead of Benny and pulled at the grate, which barred entry to a now-disused electrical room.

Benny elbowed Sam out of the way and instantly regretted it. "Sorry, this way is faster." He was smelling Dean's blood and fear, permeating the air. He jerked the gate towards him, bending it until the lock gave way. "Get them down." He barreled inside, not caring that the taller man was probably just as concerned as he was about Dean.

Dean gasped when Benny lifted him up by the waist and thrashed as he woke. He looked like he'd taken a hard beating, and was missing his clothes. One green eye was swollen closed, the other was blood red from a burst capillary. His breathing sounded shallow and labored. "Ngh, Fu- Benny?"

"Yeah, can you stand?" Benny reached up to feel the cuffs with one hand.

He nodded. "Maybe, yeah." His heart was beating harder. "Don't ask me to run."

Sam got Garth uncuffed. "I hate being naked," said Garth, and huddled against the wall.

Sam reached up with the keys. "Are you okay?" He spoke to Dean over Benny’s shoulder.

"Jus’ peachy. You?" Dean sagged against Benny when the handcuffs popped off.

Sam glanced at Benny and muttered, "Yeah, Cas patched me up."

Dean perked up a little bit. "Is he here?"

Sam turned to help Garth walk. "Nope."

They shuffled over the floor out into the pump room again, and Sam gave Garth his plaid overshirt, and Benny gave Dean his holey peacoat. Dean didn't put it on, but just wore it hanging around and over his shoulders like a shroud. He looked at his feet. "Thanks man." Benny didn’t have to see all of his face to know what Dean was thinking. It made his eyes burn and swell with unwanted tears.

Benny reached out and put his hand on the side of Dean's head, just cupping his ear and feeling his bristly hair with his fingers. "Yeah." He let his hand stay there until Dean pulled away, which took longer than he'd thought it would.

"Is the shifter dead?" said Garth, clearly uncomfortable with his bare legs and the fact that Sam's shirt ended at his mid-thigh. He looked like a kid in his father's clothing.

"It's in the trunk of the Impala. Kept it alive, in case." Sam didn't say in case of what, but he didn't really need to.

Dean gestured at the rope that led down into the water beside the pump, barely moving his arm. "She's down there."

Benny blinked. "...Tempe?" Dean nodded curtly.

Sam frowned. "The vampire?"  

Benny walked over to the rope and started pulling. Sam came over and drew his machete, holding it at the ready.

The rope was heavy and when her fingers broke the water, Benny grabbed her bound wrists and hauled her up. She spat out water, eyes glazed over and only half-opened.

Sam swung the Machete, and Benny dropped her on the floor before the blade landed. Temperance, for her part, lay there stunned and sputtering.

Sam shoved at him, growling. "Benny, don't you dare."

He didn't budge, but looked at Sam sadly before pulling the machete out of his hand. "Sam, this is my mess."

Sam frowned at him but backed away slowly. Benny sat down beside Tempe. Her feet were tied to a rope that lead down into the water, and Benny guessed there were weights at the end of it.

"I know you," she said, voice raspy and low.

"Yeah, you should. I'm sending you on, _chère_."

She lurched out from under him and skidded against the wall. One movement of her clawed hands shredded the rope around her ankles and she stood, looked at the three men behind Benny, and snarled.

Benny squared his shoulders. “You need to give it a rest, darlin’.” He lifted the machete and took a step towards her.

Sam had his gun out and trained on her, and it went off as soon as she charged forward towards the door, tearing a neat hole in her torso about the size of a dime. The sound was deafening in the concrete room, and echoed like a thunderclap. Benny swept an arm out to catch her around the waist, and threw her down against the solid floor. Temperance slid a little and spun up to crouch, and Sam’s gun went off again- this time the bullet’s path went through a lock of her wet hair and sunk into the back wall of the room. Benny raised the machete and dove forward, trying to get her down and pinned again so he could make the cut without hacking her to pieces first. It was much harder to kill someone clean when all they were doing was frantically trying to get away, and it seemed unkind to prolong it or aim to wound her.

Benny grabbed at her, and ended up only holding her dress as she twisted. He raised the machete to cleave her head off, and Temperance dove down the pipe, yanking him almost off his feet before a ripping noise left him holding a shred of ancient cotton.

He looked down at the water’s rippling surface and looked back at Sam. The hunter still had his gun up, now trained on him.

“I’ll go after her. I can catch her right quick.”

“Bullshit,” said Sam. “You let her go.”

“Sam, cut it out.” Dean was leaning on the wall, looking like he might pass out soon. “We’ll get her later.”

Benny straightened up, watching Sam’s glaring eyes as he lowered the gun.

“I can get her, I doubt she can outswim me.” He gestured to the water in the pipe with the blade.

"Benny." Dean was leaning on the water pump, face sad and swollen. "Shut up, get over here, and help me walk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chère: "Dear"


	13. Wrong Side of the River

Sam carried Garth up the ladder first. The kid had found the plastic-bagged bricks, which turned out to be stacks of cash. He grinned unevenly and tied the handles together to sling over his shoulder.

Benny and Dean stood close together down at the bottom of the hole, Dean looking at him through his blackened eye. Every now and then, he gulped. Benny thought he maybe looked apologetic, but the swelling made it hard to tell. The vampire helped him thread his arms into the sleeves of his coat. He felt guilty now, that Tempe had gotten away just because he’d rather kill her clean than hack into her with a blade.

"Anything broken, Dean?" He supposed he'd had enough time to feel what would be a problem.

Dean shifted and he slightly winced. "Feels like a couple ribs on my left.” The hunter was still avoiding meeting his eyes more than usual.   

Benny touched the sleeve of his own coat on Dean’s arm, rubbing off imaginary lint. "Okay, hold on to me, I'll carry you up."

Dean closed his good eye and carefully hugged Benny around his neck, lifting a leg around his middle so Benny could get a foot up on the ladder.  He murmured under Benny’s ear. “I’m sorry, Benny.”

“You gotta stop apologizing. I’m the one that let her get away.” Benny started his ascent with his nose pressed against Dean's pulse. It was harder than he'd thought, being this close to him. He smelled terrible, and he smelled like home. In the last two days things between them had changed, and now he felt adrift, like he didn’t belong this close. The strange position Dean was in, wrapped around his front, really just compounded his confusion. He gulped and kept on his way up, and when he reached the fresh air, let Sam help to get his brother out of the manhole.

Garth was huddled next to the pickup, peeking around it, and Sam whispered harshly at Benny. " _Don't make noise._ " He half-expected that Sam would try to slice his head off just on principle.

Benny slid out of the sewer and crouched, watching a carnival of nearby police lights cast red/blue on their surroundings. The lights were coming from the other side of the truck, and he could hear keenly across the street the sound of the trunk of the Impala opening.

"What's happening?" Dean whispered. Sam motioned for him to stay down, and Benny touched Dean's shoulder.

Benny looked at Sam, jaw clenched, and then back at Dean. "They're going to find the shifter cuffed in the Impala's trunk."

Dean managed to look worried through all his abrasions. Sam had a look of panic on his face, as he tried to work out what they could do. Benny quietly unsnapped his shoulder holster and took out his gun, handing the leather strap and holster to Dean. Dean held it and blinked at him, forehead wrinkling in puzzlement.

Benny closed the manhole cover quietly. "Can't let the shifter get away, too." Benny glanced to Sam, and ventured a rueful smile. "Get them in the truck, get out of here. If I can, I'll meet you at Eagle Lake.”

“What are you doing?” Dean whispered harshly.

Benny smirked and checked his clip. Four bullets left. “It's time for my Jack Ruby impression."

Sam seemed to get the reference immediately, and nodded. Dean just blinked as it dawned on him what Benny was planning.

Garth cleared his throat and he held up the truck's key, retrieved from under the bumper. "Spare was still there."

Dean grabbed Benny's arm. "Let's just all go, Benny. We'll get the car later."

Benny looked at his hand on his sleeve. "He'll get away. Can't allow it."

"I'll get him later." Dean's fingers dug in, warm. "Don't do it."

"I ain't gonna die, Dean. Or are you worried I'll hurt one of the cops?"

Dean closed his eyes. "No." It looked like he wanted to say something else, but he bowed his head.

"Then I’ll catch you later, chief."

Sam pulled open the door quietly and crawled into the driver's seat through the passenger side. Garth followed, and then it was Dean's turn. Dean looked back at Benny, obviously trying to look like it didn’t hurt him to twist his neck around. “I’ll find you,” he said. “You better be there.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow night.” Benny moved to the rear of the truck, peeking over across the street to see the two officers pulling the shifter out of it, one of them giving half his attention to the radio on his shoulder. The vampire stood up fully as Sam turned the engine over and immediately gunned the pickup away and down the street.

Benny was left alone, staring at the two officers and the shifter, his gun in his hand behind his thigh. The officers seemed confused, and one of them looked from Benny, to his duplicate, and back again. The shifter turned, about to flee.  

Benny ran forward towards the three, and heard one of the cops shout “ _Gun!_ ” before the vampire fired the first shot and hit the shifter square in the chest.

The trigger of the Beretta was hard to pull- it was one of the reasons he liked the old gun; it needed the full strength of a grown man’s hand to pull it. There was no chance it could go off by mistake.  He poured the remaining three silver bullets into the shifter’s heart, and when the last shell ejected, he allowed himself a moment, standing still to listen.

No heartbeat from his doppelganger on the ground. Just the sound of a Glock clearing the holster to his left.

When Benny had to move, he could be incredibly fast. Still, he was shot in the lower back twice as he ran for the river, skirting the parking lot and falling down, scrambling over rocky abutments, quick as he could into the muck and mire. His teeth were protruding and it was all he could do to move away from the easy food they’d provide if he just turned and went back.

They’d grazed his spine, which made his legs tingle more than anything. He stumbled and slid over the algae-coated boulders at the shore and as soon as he hit the water the fresh exit wound sucked water into his lungs quick, which was fine since he didn’t plan on staying buoyant on the surface anyway. It burned his insides all the same, as his body tried to knit back together.

At least the damn shifter was dead. The worst thing that could happen at this point was Temperance finding someone to have for a snack. He sunk down into the river and started to swim. He heard shouting resounding through the water from above, and figured they’d be dragging for a body by dawn. Benny tucked the empty Beretta into his waistband and let his weight carry him down.

 

* * *

 

His feet touched the bottom and he rested for a few moments before shedding his shoes. It was strange, and he figured that he could joke about losing more of his clothing when he was anywhere near Dean on a hunt. This was maybe the third shirt he’d ruined in four days. He pulled that off too. It was more holes and blood than cotton at this point anyhow.

It was hard to see in the water with all the silt, but at least he could move through the current and get upstream from where he’d gone under.

And then he had to concern himself with Temperance. There was no telling where she’d gone, if she’d linger near the river, or if she was hungry when she went under the water. He had to put it out of his mind and get far enough away that he wouldn’t be found by the police. Benny trode upriver through the muck, blind to everything further than a few feet. He ended up rising through the water on the far side on the wooded shore of Louisiana, which suited him just fine.

He walked until he couldn’t see the neon of the casino, and the rising sun flooded the treetops with pleasant yet unbearable light. He slumped down under the remains of an ancient pier and pulled a bit of swamp grass over his body to hide himself from the sun.

The need to rest and sleep dragged at him. He didn’t know if his veins pumped adrenaline through them, but in the absence of blood to drink, it was a fight to stay moving after being shot again.

Dean had once said something about counting sheep, and how he didn’t count plain old sheep, but instead things he’d killed. It was one of the things he’d said in the endless hours of conversation in purgatory.

Benny went to sleep counting bullets passing through him. 

 

* * *

 

Benny’s small boat was easily scuttled on the shore so it wouldn’t drift away.

He knew that this was a dream, and he wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next. But that was the problem with sleeping as a vampire. It was a reel-to-reel tape that was set to play until he woke up, and there was no changing things. Sometimes there were some differences, but it was as though they were layered in on top of the dream itself, just signposts pointing to things that were real. Like the smell of blood bubbling up through the mud. Benny was trapped inside himself for the duration of this memory, stuck firmly to the path he’d chosen decades before.

His hands parted the reeds near the shack and he walked up onto the land, listening to the crickets in the area sing. There wasn’t a sound from the house itself, but he had hoped they didn’t find her. He had hoped he could tell his nest and the old man that she was long gone, and return to them with some sort of dignity. He didn’t like being near the old river, he was always worried that somehow he’d be recognized by someone he’d known thirty years before- and they’d know him as a monster as soon as they laid eyes on him. The easy familiarity with the land stabbed at him, a sharp reminder of not belonging.

He wasn’t sure whether or not the feeling of dread in his stomach had been there before, but he did remember being uncertain about whether or not Temperance was still inside the tiny house. Benny pushed the door open slowly and stepped into the room, taking in the shreds of former domesticity that now laid about in a state of chaotic rearrangement. She was laying on a mattress laid on the floor with a blanket cast over her body, head resting on her arm.

In the corner, propped up against the wall, sat Dean. His chest was bloody and his lips parted. He wasn’t breathing. Benny’s bones ached to move towards him, to pull him up against him and shake some life into his dead eyes, but he couldn’t so much as step in his direction. The dream had him on a firm path.

Benny sighed and set down his machete on a rotted old radio. “I see you’re still haunting this place.”

Temperance rolled onto her back and sighed. “Maybe I was just waiting for you.”

“Remember my warning?” His eyes flickered over her and away. It felt like she wanted him to look at her on the bed, her hips turned to the side and one knee pulled up.

She nodded. “I ain’t fed.” She pulled the blanket down a little to show that she didn’t have any clothing on.

Benny glanced down at her chest and shrugged. “It ain’t a negotiation, _petit_. You come to my nest, or you get gone.”

Tempe sat up, frowning a little at his condescending tone. “I don’t like bein’ told what to do.”

He smirked cruelly. “Well, your table manners are garbage, even a thing like me knows not to leave a mess after.”

She stood up slowly, and Benny’s eyes were rooted to the way she let the blanket glide the rest of the way down her body.  Her smile didn’t quite reach her dark and half-lidded eyes, but she put her hand on his chest and pulled at the row of buttons.  She opened his shirt patiently, insisting on touching his chest and combing her fingers through the hair there.

He looked down at her body, frowning slightly. He had a choice in this, which was a strange novelty to him, and kind of sad that he wasn’t used to it. When his master wanted him, he had him, and there wasn’t a lot Benny wouldn’t do to please his dark god.

She kissed him on the mouth and he turned his head away, but he still let her pull his suspenders off his shoulders and  mouth at his neck. His fingertips hovered over her cold skin, catching at the bottom of her rib cage. When she made a tiny, desperate huff under his ear, he let his hands do what they wanted and pulled her close against his body.

Tempe pulled him down on top of her and grunted when her back hit the mattress. She shoved her hand down his belly and under his waistband, cupping him and giving a gentle squeeze that made Benny close his eyes.

He rocked into her hand and thought briefly about leaving her right then. He’d already delivered his ultimatum, and now his nest was coming after her. But then Tempe moaned in his ear and it was so baldly theatrical, so forced and unnatural, that he decided not to try to help her. Let her dig her own grave.

She broke the button of his trousers to get them open and steered him inside of her anxiously and quick, tilting her hips up as he sunk all the way in.  Her legs wound their way around his waist and she pulled him close so Tempe could gasp in his ear.

It wasn’t that the noises she made weren’t genuine, but they weren’t anything he’d earned. They were for someone else. He shut his eyes and buried himself in her.

 

* * *

 

“I got to move on, darlin.” Benny got up from the floor, pulling his trousers up from around his ankles.

She leaned back against the wall and crossed her legs, her face showing a shadow of disappointment. Her head turned away from him as he stood and pulled his shirt back on. “Come with me, Benny,” she said softly. “Keep me good.”

He scoffed. “Was that what you thought this was? A way to get me on your side?”

Tempe didn’t answer, but the look of disappointment on her face before it crumpled told him everything he needed to know.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Petit: "little"


	14. Wasted Words

Benny rose up out of the water at dusk and walked barefoot onto the dry land of the isthmus at Eagle Lake, stepping over the scrub. There wasn’t a lot of land, and even fewer people, but Dean wasn’t one of them.  He barely looked around after the quick scan of the picnic area yielded no Dean, and no Impala.  Looking at the red-clad sunset burned his eyes.

Before anyone paid him any mind or noticed the empty pistol in his waistband, Benny picked up a discarded tablecloth and wrapped it around his shoulders. He sat down on a stump and looked out at the water as it got dark. He’d wait out the night for Dean, and if he still didn’t show up, maybe try to use a phone somewhere. The people  in the area, a couple of fishers and some kids playing with a remote helicopter, cleared out before the stars appeared.

A small sound near the shore caught his attention and he turned to look at the still water. It rippled, a few yards from the reeds.

Temperance had followed him. He watched her stand up out of the muck and walk onto the land, her dress stained darker by the mire.

Benny stood up, his muscles feeling stiff and slow. “Girl, you could have chosen a better time.”

She spat out a lungful of water to speak. “Maybe I was just waiting for you.” Her clothing clung to her as she walked.

He opened his mouth to say something else to her but her eyes flicked over his shoulder and Benny heard an approaching car. Neither vampire made a move, and Tempe gradually smiled, her teeth shining wetly in the dark. The car wasn’t the Impala, and it didn’t sound like the human heartbeat behind the wheel belonged to Dean. The dread in the pit of Benny’s stomach grew. Its wheels crunched over the dirt road and rattled to a halt, headlights focused on both of them. The high beams flicked on and burned his eyes.

She sprang at Benny.

He dropped the gingham from around his shoulders and grabbed Tempe by her matted hair. She still knocked him on his back, despite her diminutive size.

Benny felt her teeth sink into the inside of his elbow. Her head twisted and he yanked his arm away with an awful tearing sound. She didn’t have a blade and neither did he, so the alternative was them tearing each other apart, which could take a little time, even if Benny won. The person in the car would see everything, and Benny didn’t want them to bring the police. He’d had enough bullets in him this week to last a while. Still, he couldn’t risk letting her loose. She scratched his forehead and blood ran into his eyes, so he grappled blind, using the hand wound into her hair to hold her close.

The car was still idling as they fought on the ground. It wouldn’t be good if a civilian saw them ripping at each other. He kicked at Tempe and she wrenched her head free, skidding in some mud, crouching like an animal. He picked up a rock and stood.

The car’s engine shut off and the door creaked open slowly. Benny couldn’t risk a glance over until he pinned her down again. He grabbed her by the wrist and dug his fingernails in, yanking her back when she tried to lunge towards the human near the car.

This didn’t feel right, and Benny grimaced, but he still brought the rock down with his full strength on her back, and heard her bones breaking under her slim muscles. Tempe howled and tore at the ground with her fingers, and Benny raised the rock again. He knew her body, and he wished he didn’t. His next blow landed on her shoulder.

“Benjamin! Benjamin!” she was screaming his name despite her injuries, over and over again, until the syllables lost their meaning. He grimaced and held her tighter.

A machete cut through the air with a sharp whistle and hacked through Tempe’s neck, cutting her clean. Her head thudded into the dirt with a simple thump.

Benny blinked and looked up to see Sam silhouetted in the headlights. The hunter raised the blade out of the muck, holding it out, ready to use it again. Benny closed his mouth and let go of Temperance’s body. He couldn’t see Sam’s face through the blinding light, but he knew he was next.

And that would be fine by him. A fitting end. Benny tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

The gravel under Sam’s boots crunched as he stepped away. _“Get in the car,”_ he said, fury chilling his tone.

It felt like his strings had been cut. Benny stood up slowly and moved to the passenger side. He crawled in and sat down in the assumedly stolen vehicle and pulled his Beretta out from behind his waist, setting the gun down on the rear seat.

Sam settled in the driver’s side and glanced at him. “Blood in the cooler back there.”

He was surprised to hear it but quietly reached back to pick up a packet of blood, and bit off the cap at the end of the small straw. He sipped as the car navigated the bumpy dirt road, Sam’s sour mood flavoring the air between them.

Eventually, when they pulled onto asphalt, Benny spoke. “Is Dean all right?”

Sam’s lips were a tight line. “No, he’s hurt.” He didn’t appear to want to elaborate on it.

“Did you take him to a hospital?”

“No. He’s full of painkillers in a Motel outside of Dermott.”

“Allright. That’s good.” He cleared his throat. “So, where are _we_ going?”

“Dean’s insisted that I bring you to him.” He was obviously seething.

“You know, you could just have cut my head off back there, tell Dean I never made it.” Benny drawled softly and started to drink down another packet of blood.

Sam was quiet for a long while. “Is that what you want?”

“No, but... you must have thought about it.”

“Yeah, of course, but I’m not going to lie to my brother. He’s had enough of that from you.” Sam hissed.

“Wait... what?”

“That vampire called you by name.”

He swallowed and looked out the passenger window. “That was years ago.”

“Fine, you know what? You don’t have to tell me anything, be as secretive as you want-”

“-I slept with her in the fifties,” Benny interrupted. His skin felt itchy.

“And you didn’t tell Dean?”

“What, Sam, am I going to start listing my sins from the day I got bit? Gonna be a long, long talk and Dean don’t want to hear none of it.”

Sam almost stopped paying attention to the road. “You didn’t think that he needed to know about that? How much do you want to bet that he found out from her? Or the shifter?”

Benny grit his teeth. “It was one time, and I wasn’t in love with _her._ ”

Sam was quiet then, but it didn’t seem like the matter was settled.

The radio started to play a remake of an old song Benny knew, and the vampire frowned softly as he listened to it, smothered by the _wrongness_ of it all.

“You’re in love with Dean?” He sounded strangely neutral.

Benny looked over at him and nodded. “Yeah.”

The car ate up another mile or so before Sam spoke again. “You know he doesn’t need any more burdens.”

Benny chuckled, despite how that remark stung. “I don’t plan on being one.”

“If any more of your secrets come out and hurt him, I will bury you. I will put you in a box and padlock it shut.”

“Alright.” Benny folded his hands and leaned back in his seat.

“Alright,” echoed Sam. He steered them onto the single-lane highway that took them north to the last bridge over the river in the state of Mississippi.

 

* * *

 

It only took a couple of hours to get to Arkansas, and the small town of Dermott. Sam pulled into a motel lot beside the highway and put the car into park without cutting the engine. He eyed Benny and pulled out a key with a number placard attached to it, tossing it over to the vampire. “Dean’s in that room. He’s got painkillers and TV. Garth will bring the Impala tomorrow.”

Benny got out, still barefoot and wearing only his trousers. He felt conspicuous even though it was around three in the morning and even the strip motel’s office light had been turned off. He pulled the cooler and his gun out of the back seat and leaned down to look at Sam, whose hands were on the wheel as he looked towards the road.

“Thanks, Sam. See you later.” Benny looked at his eyes in the rearview mirror, and found them slippery.

“No, you won’t.” Sam put the car in drive.

Benny stood there for a minute as Sam pulled out of the lot and headed north in the light fog. Then he looked at the number on the key and went to room four. He opened the door to a dark room with a pair of queen beds against the wall to his left, and a TV playing infomercials lowly in the corner to his right.

Dean was breathing heavily and didn’t stir, even as Benny shut the door with a harder click than he would have liked. Empty beer bottles were gathered on a small round laminate table, as well as a few pharmacy bags. He looked around in the dark room and set his cooler down next to the spare bed before going to check on Dean.

The hunter was deeply unconscious, and didn’t stir when Benny touched his shoulder and lifted his wrist to look at the bruised skin there. It looked more raw than anything else, and probably would heal up easily in a few days. The bruised eye was a little more worrisome, since it was swollen, mostly black and purple in color.

Benny took a shower and rooted around the room until he found a spare set of clothes Dean must have kept for him, and dressed in the fresh cotton jeans and a shirt that almost crackled with starch when he put it on. He looked at one of Dean’s flannels for a long bit before deciding against putting it on. After fifty years of suspenders, he sorta felt odd without them over his shoulders.

He borrowed twenty bucks from Dean’s wallet and left to get him breakfast, and a bag of ice he’d use to keep the swelling down on the hunter’s eye as well as cooling the blood he left in the cooler.

A diner was a four-mile walk into town, and he got there just before dawn, made an order of eggs and hash browns to go, and took a cup of coffee too, mixing it the way Dean liked before walking on back.

He was starting to feel the sun on his face before he got back into the room, and Dean, bless him, was sitting up in bed, looking groggy as hell, gun in his lap.

“God, Benny. I almost shot you through the door.”

“Glad you’re woke up. Breakfast is served.” Benny smiled and brought it over.

“Help me up, I’m not eating in bed.”

Benny set it on the table, nudging the beer bottles over.   He lent Dean an arm and helped him up. “You hurt that bad?”

Dean stood up woozily and wrapped his arms around Benny’s sides. “Looks worse than it feels.” He kissed him on the mouth gingerly, lips uncoordinated and slipping over to mouth the stubble on Benny’s cheek.

Benny smiled and pet the back of Dean’s neck. “Eat something, sugar.”

“But I love you,” he slurred.

Benny smiled, he couldn’t help it. Dean was cute when he was loopy. “Yeah. I love you too.”  

Dean concentrated as he walked to a chair next to the table and popped open the take out container, and immediately devoured the bacon on top, licking his fingers.

Benny was content to watch, but sat at the foot of the bed, elbows on his knees, trying to not stare quite so hard. The TV was playing the local news, something about escaped goats; just typical country news. He listened to the sounds of Dean eating and let himself relax a little. They could take a few days here, and not worry that anything was coming after them.

But then there was the matter of the dreams Benny had had- even after he’d helped to save Dean, after the danger had passed, he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Anybody know we’re here, Dean?”

Dean took a drink of coffee and smacked his lips, savoring it.“Just Sam- oh, and Garth, since he’s gotta bring the car here.”

Benny nodded. “You’re sure that’s it?”

“Yeah, man. What’s wrong?”

The vampire stood and went to look out the window. It was daylight now, so he just poked the curtain aside and glared at the lot and the highway stretching behind it. “Bad dreams, brother.”

“Is this some kind of metaphor? You ain’t a psychic.”

“Vampires dream different.”

Dean stuffed his mouth full of scrambled egg and spoke around it. “Yeah? Do tell.”

“Dreams are really more like... memories. But instead of just getting a whole big bunch of flashes at once, I see everything as it happened, like.. like a movie. Good or bad, I’m just along for the ride.”

Dean blinked. “Well that’s not fun.”

“Yeah, so I don’t like to sleep unless I’m real tired. Or hurt.”

“Were you hurt when I picked you up near the coast?”

“Hadn’t slept in four days then. Needed it. And when I put it off it lasts longer.” Benny stepped away from the window.

Dean sat back in his chair. “So tell me what it is that’s got you all tied up.”

“I...there’s these things I did before I went to Purgatory, and... bits of you keep showing up when I dream about it.”

“Like.. chopped up bits of me?”

“No.”

“So what happened to me?”

“When you picked me up in Mississippi and I said I had a dream about you... I dreamed about an old kill from a long while ago- but this time, when I dropped the body overboard… I think saw your body, Dean. And I just watched you sink.”

Dean blinked and nodded. “These things don’t come true, do they? I mean, I’m planning on heading to Kansas after this, I think you’ll have a hard time dumping me in the ocean in a landlocked state.”

“I thought maybe it was because of what happened in Vicksburg. But even after we found you, I’m still dreaming things like it. Different things happening, but there’s still blood mixed in it everywhere.” He gulped around the lump in his throat.

“Listen, what happened back there, Benny...” the hunter looked down and away. “Not your fault. None of it.”

Benny smirked and shrugged. “Maybe it ain’t my fault. That don’t mean I’m innocent.”

Dean set his plastic fork on the lid of the takeout container. He looked at Benny until the vampire began to study the carpet. “Benny.”

He rubbed his forehead and smiled ruefully. “ _C’est moi,_ ” he said.

“I don’t blame you for anything that happened,” Dean got up, a little unsteady on his feet. He slowly walked over to Benny and put his hands on his shoulders. “We just went into the job blind.” He bent slowly to kiss him on the forehead. Then he crawled onto Benny’s lap, knees on the bedspread, sitting on the vampire’s thighs rather than sliding onto his groin.

Benny ghosted his hand over Dean’s side, knowing well how badly his ribs were bruised. He watched the hunter’s eyes as he grazed his shirt, and saw a hint of hesitation there. “I wish I could fix it. Take it back,” he said.

Dean’s hand held the back of his head softly, the casual touch enough to make Benny shudder. “What happened, in the end? We turned on the police scanner in Garth’s pickup, but it wasn’t clear,” Dean said.

Benny’s hand moved down to stroke Dean’s thigh. “I got away after I shot the shifter.”

“Radio said they shot a suspect. How bad did they get you?”

“They shot me but I ran for the river, got underwater quick. I keep ruining my clothes around you, Dean. Just keep finding excuses to strip down.” He smirked.  “I managed to not fall asleep until I got a mile up the river and under some old pier.”

“What about Tempe?”

“I didn’t see her there.” He looked up at Dean, trying not to see how fragile he was. Dean would hate knowing that Benny thought of him at all that way.

“Tell me about her,” said Dean as he held Benny’s face.

Benny screwed his eyes shut. “I don’t like to think about her. ‘Specially not now.”

“Don’t think, just talk.” He stroked Benny’s beard.

“Sam killed her. When he came to pick me up, she was following me I guess. She had.. a thing for me.”

“What kind of thing?”

Benny shook his head and looked away.  “It ain’t my best decade, I don’t like to dwell on it. She liked me for some goddamn reason.”

Dean sighed softly. “But you didn’t like her.”

“No, but she was offering, and I wasn’t picky, and she wanted me any way she could get me, I suppose.” Benny looked away, frowning.

“You slept with her.”

Benny nodded, jaw clenched.

“That’s okay, Benny, I don’t think less of you just because you went and slept with something evil.”

Benny gulped. He didn’t want to make excuses for her but she wasn’t _that._ “She… Tempe lost control if she didn’t feed. She was alone. Really alone. So she’d starve herself then kill and kill, and then she’d feel the guilt that the hunger hid from her and go back into hiding for another year, maybe two.”

“But you said she was insane.” The hunter combed his hands through his hair.

“Yeah, and it’s true. She was stuck. Couldn’t live with other vampires because they’d want her to feed, couldn’t control herself on her own.”

“So your maker-”

“Yeah, he sent me in to make her an offer, and she refused. She tried to get me to come to her side. Didn’t work out for her,” said Benny.

“Oh, damn.”

Benny shook his head. “And when she came out of the river yesterday… I’m not sure if she was mocking me, or if she wanted to die.  She attacked, and I got her down on the ground, and Sam... Sam’s the one that cut off her head.” It made him feel ill to think of her body laying out to rot in the sun. He figured that was one more thing he didn’t want to dwell on too deeply.

Dean was watching his face, and tugged gently on his ear to get him to meet his eyes. “Benny, it’s not your fault.”

He looked away again. “Dean, the things I’ve done for my maker, there’s nothing that can make those things all right.”

The hunter turned Benny’s head and forced him to look into his eyes. “You already paid for that.”

Benny didn’t quite agree but knew he couldn’t argue Dean into seeing his sins for what they were. He just nodded and moved in to kiss the man on his lap gently. Dean stroked the back of Benny’s head and pulled away with a cringe.

“Sorry, Benny. Need more meds.”

He watched Dean gingerly extract himself from his lap and go to the pharmacy bag, rattling a bottle open onto his palm. Benny looked at the bruises on Dean’s legs and sighed. “Have you thought about calling Cas?”

Dean grunted. “After what he did to you? No, he’s off the rails. I’m not sure what’s up with him.”

“Dean, he let Sam and I know where you were.”

“Well, _I_ didn’t call him. Didn’t get desperate enough.” Dean took a sip of coffee to wash his pills down.

“Dean, what happened to you down there?”

“Do you want a list? It doesn’t matter.” Dean laid down on the bed with a few soft wincing sounds.

Benny stood up to help him cover up with a blanket. “It matters. You’ve gone through worse, but not by my hands.”

“It wasn’t _by your hands,_ damnit.”

“He looked like me,” said Benny.

He closed his eyes in exasperation and gestured to the ice chest. “Just make me a cold pack.”

Benny nodded and put together a towel with ice inside of it. He passed it to Dean. The hunter adjusted it on his cheek with a groan and patted the bed. “Will you sit?”

He kicked off his shoes and got onto the bed next to him, sitting up against the headboard. “You’ll feel alright soon, brother.”

“This is about as close as I get to all right these days.” The corner of Dean’s eye wrinkled with his drowsy smile. “You can change the channel to whatever.”

Benny pet his scalp softly. “I’m good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C’est Moi: “It’s me.”


	15. The Hangman's Knee

 

Art by TKodami (AKA [Dustyjournal](http://dustyjournal.tumblr.com/)) ([LJ](http://tkodami.livejournal.com/7629.html)) ([Tumblr](http://tkodami.tumblr.com/))

* * *

 

It was the late afternoon when Benny heard the sounds of a truck pulling up outside the room and checked the window. Garth was talking to the driver as he lowered the impala on a winch. The back window had been taped up with a garbage bag. Benny looked back to Dean on the bed, rolled on his side, sleeping soundly.

Benny put on some sunglasses that belonged to Dean, and stepped outside.

Garth waved and walked over briskly, looking strange in a suit that fit him as though he were the hanger it was sold on. He was wearing concealer to hide his bruises, too, and that made him look slightly sweaty and plastic. “Hey, Benny.”

The vampire stood in the shadow of the motel’s overhang. “Hi Garth.”

“How is he?” He ambled over with a plastic bag in his hand.

Benny sighed a little bit. “Sleeping. High on painkillers.”

“He get oxy? Watch that shit.”

“That’s the plan. Is the car running right?”

“Yeah of course. I just know... Dean wouldn’t want anybody else to drive it, you know?” Garth shrugged.

Benny chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Can I see him?”

“Garth, he’s sleeping. Let him rest. He’ll call ya,” Benny said.

The hunter awkwardly shifted his weight and glanced at Benny. “Look, uh... when the shifter had us...” the truck behind him made a hydraulic hiss and Garth jumped a little. “Dean uh... Dean kept him off of me.”

Benny sighed. That fit with the Dean he knew. “I’m not surprised.”

“I mean it. He knew how to push that guy’s buttons, kept the monster going on him until Dean passed out.”

“Garth, if he doesn’t want me to know about what happened, I shouldn’t be hearing it.” He knew he had an edge to his tone that didn’t quite belong there. He liked Garth- he was a strange little guy, but loyal to Dean and Sam.

Garth nodded and looked down to what he was carrying. “Okay. So… on the way out I found the shifter’s stash of stolen money from the casino. Here’s your cut.” He handed him the bag. “Dean’s too. And a... also an apology in there. Can I see Dean?”

“Yeah, but keep your voice down.” Benny unlocked the door behind him quietly. “Like I said, he’s sleeping.”

Despite his efforts to keep quiet, Dean woke up quick and looked around groggily, feeling for a gun that wasn’t under his pillow. After his hand closed on empty air he seemed to realize who was in the room with him, and focused on the other hunter. “Oh. Hey, Garth.”

Benny shut the door and set the bag of money down. The “apology” in the bag with the cash looked like a local newspaper. Benny went to look at it while Garth and Dean spoke to each other, both of them fumbling. It would probably take a while for them to feel at ease around each other again, if they ever did.

Garth cleared his throat. “Yeah, so... the car’s being taken off the tow truck right now. I taped up the back window and it’s under a tarp. I had to tell Vicksburg PD that I was taking it to the FBI headquarters in Jackson, so you might want to steer clear of the south for a little while.”

“That was kinda the plan.” Dean yawned and winced when something pained him.

Benny unfolded the paper and looked at the part that it was folded back to, the small ad circled in the classifieds. Some estate sale from the weekend before. He frowned a little.

Garth crossed his arms, standing near the bags from the pharmacy, reading labels surreptitiously. “You feeling okay?”

Dean scoffed. “Nope. But I’ll be fine.”

Benny turned and held out the paper. “Garth, why is this circled? An estate sale in Missouri?”

Dean glanced, then looked away guiltily.

Garth had a little bit of a shaky smile and combed his fingers through his hair. “That’s… uh... well, that was the Lafitte estate.”

“The Lafitte estate.” Benny dropped the paper on the bed. Dean turned away and laid back down on the bed.

“Yeah, uh… Charles passed away last October. His second wife is selling the place... and like it said in the ad, he had a lot of World War two memorabilia.”

Benny shook his head and headed for the door. He had his hand on the knob and paused to look back at Garth. Just leaving would be rude, so he had to say something. “Need some air.” He gulped. “Garth. I’m… grateful to you.”

The slim hunter blinked. “No problem... I owed you one. I still do.”

Benny didn’t quite agree with Garth’s words, but wanted to stay in the room even less. So he walked out into the parking lot and went around to sit in the shade just east of the motel’s sign. He closed his eyes and wished that he couldn’t completely recollect the tiny newspaper clipping he’d just read, his son’s life summed up in less than thirty words. What was that Hemingway story, just six words to make you cry? _“Baby shoes for sale; never worn.”_

His son had been thirteen the last time he saw him, and the weight of that, knowing that Charles lived almost seventy-seven more years without seeing his father ever again, without even knowing what became of him, felt like it could crush him.

It was awful to be right in the end. Benny knew he didn’t belong any more. Not really, not even with Dean trying his best to keep him on the straight and narrow. Pretending to be a mortal man only meant that he’d be a misfit, a grim parody of a human being. They were just so fragile, as a species, that he hurt them by being close, like a Typhoid Mary.  

Perhaps it was time to do something about it.

He watched traffic for a few minutes, but turned back when he heard the tow truck start again and watched it roll out, pulling away with Garth in the passenger side. He raised his hand to the hunter, and he returned the gesture.

Benny kept his eyes on the truck as it diminished down the straight strip of highway. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and slinked back to the room, quietly opened the door, and stepped inside.

Dean was sitting with his back against the headboard, eyes reddened.

“Darlin, you been cryin?”

Dean just shrugged and held out his hand to him. “I’m sorry.”

Benny crawled onto the bed beside him and put his hand on his knee. “You don’t need to be sorry, Dean. You didn’t make me a vampire, or send me to purgatory.”

“Bringing you on a vamp hunt wasn’t fair. I should have known it would be a mess.”

He shrugged and laid down on his side next to Dean’s irrepressible body heat. “It wasn’t really a vamp hunt. It just looked like one.”

Dean ran his hand through Benny’s hair and smiled softly. “I know I’m all busted up, but can we please do something? I want to be with you right now.”

He smiled ruefully. Benny couldn’t refuse him anything, even if it hurt him to do it. “Yeah, okay.” He kissed the corner of Dean’s mouth, and watched him smile. “Nice and slow, _chére._ ”

Dean huffed a little and turned his head to kiss him. “If you insist.”

“You know I do.” Benny kept his hands light as he touched the hunter, pulling his shirt up above his stomach and tracing his fingers underneath. He wasn’t as bold as he usually was with Dean and after a few minutes of soft kisses, Dean made a small noise of impatience.

“Benny, come on man, don’t act like you have cold feet.” His hand crept over and cupped Benny’s groin, rubbing against the crisp denim.

“I’m trying to figure out how to bend you over so I won’t hurt your busted ribs.” He smirked against Dean’s stubble and kissed under his jaw.

Dean laughed at that and pulled himself up to sit on top of Benny’s lap, this time grinding on top of him. “I know what my limits are, I’ll tap out if you’re too rough.”

“Dean, you ever just... let somebody make love to you?”

Dean scoffed and rolled his head back, grinding on the vampire with his full weight. His boxers were tented and he started to work at undoing Benny’s fly.

Benny sighed and put his hand on top of  Dean’s fingers, stilling him insistently. “I mean it, Dean.”  

His hand tightened and he frowned deeply. “What do you want, huh? You want to see me break down and cry?”

Benny was quiet and let go of Dean’s hand. Dean’s jaw was set and his eyes squeezed shut. Eventually, Benny spoke. “No, I don’t want that, Dean. I love you.”

The hunter looked stricken and confused, and he opened his mouth to say something, to offer an argument that died before it came to his lips. Instead, Dean got off him and stumbled into the motel’s bathroom, slamming the door.

Benny heard the shower turn on and sighed, eyes tearing up. It wasn’t that Dean’s reaction wasn’t something that surprised him, really. He knew the hunter didn’t think he was worth loving, but here Benny was, like a fish on a line. And it hurt, the hook was in too deep to ever come back out. After he heard Dean’s electric razor turn on, he sat up and reached for the hunter’s phone.


	16. Brothers in Arms

Sam picked up on the fourth ring, just as Benny sat down, mentally prepared to leave him a message.

“Dean?” he asked, concerned.

Benny’s mouth was dry.  “Sam, it’s Benny.” He opened the cooler, and stared at the blood.

“... you’re using Dean’s phone to call me,” he huffed.

“I figured you wouldn’t answer my number.”

“Well, you’re right.” Sam sounded bitter.

“I can’t stay with him.” Benny almost muttered it. He knew it was true as soon as it left his lips, but it still felt sacrilegious to speak it aloud.

“Look, Dean made it clear that you and him weren’t any of my business. So whatever your problems, I’m not going to play mediator or referee or whatever.”

“I mean, I’m gonna leave. There’s... he’s not in good shape.”

“What did you do?”

“He’s fine. He’d say he’s fine, you know how that goes.”

Sam huffed. There was a woman’s voice in the background and then it sounded like he had covered the microphone to say something to her. Eventually the line rustled as he held the phone to his ear again. “So what happened?”

“Dean... well, he’s on his painkillers and... it’s not like he’s not himself. He’s kinda too much like himself, if you get my meaning.”

“Yeah.” Sam sighed, exasperated. “I get it, but... I’m not coming.”

Benny blinked and glanced at the bathroom door as he heard the water turn off.  “I see.” He said it softly, almost whispering in case Dean would hear. “Well, then I guess that’s on you.”

“No it isn’t. He chose you over me, Benny. Like... twice. I’ve got a good thing going on and I’m not coming back for him right now. Maybe someday, but not today.”

“Got to go.” Benny hung up and put the phone down on the table, and pulled out a packet of blood so he could pretend to have been drinking it all along. He leaned back in the chair and sipped, and when Dean came out of the bathroom, skin pink and steaming, Benny looked away before Dean caught him staring with his greedy eyes.

The hunter put on a fresh pair of boxers and a t-shirt and looked around for his phone before spotting it at the table next to Benny and limping over to pick it up. He flipped it open and frowned. “You called Sam?”

Benny hadn’t expected that the phone would rat him out, but he nodded anyway.

“Why?”

He fumbled for an answer, looking at the motel’s carpet. “I... thought maybe he’d come back.”

Dean laughed bitterly. “Yeah, yeah right.”

Benny rolled his head on his shoulders and met Dean’s eyes. “Dean, I know you’re all kinds of fucked up right now, and maybe it’s the painkillers, but if all you want me to do is fuck you, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

The hunter sighed and knelt down on the carpet next to Benny’s knee. He gave a tiny little grunt of pain when something inside him twinged. The vampire touched his shoulder and Dean batted his hand away.  “Look, I know I’m fucked up. So just... take it back.”

“Take what back?”

“You don’t have to love me. I mean, I know you feel obligated to, after I got you out of purgatory, after Prentice island and Andrea. But after all that shit I did to you in Vicksburg and you _still_ came after me… you don’t owe me, Benny.”

It took a moment for his words to start hurting, but when they did, the vampire frowned and pulled Dean up, gently and insistently hugging him. “Brother, there’s more to me and you than owing each other our lives.”

Dean made a little noise in the back of his throat and squeezed his eyes shut against Benny’s shirt, sniffling.  He took deep, shuddering breaths, his hands settled on Benny’s thighs, still and unmoving, for once just letting himself be held.

 

* * *

 

Later, the hunter didn’t want to talk about it. Dean grew restless and quiet. He flipped through the channels, couldn’t seem to find a comfortable place on the bed, and replied to Benny with a shrug or a grunt if he tried to talk to him again.

He’d gone to the lobby of the motel to gather a few takeout menus that would deliver to the guests, and left them stacked on the nightstand next to the phone. The hunter seemed content to leave him alone, mostly. He also wasn’t looking at Benny unless Benny pretended to be looking elsewhere. It seemed uncharacteristically childish of him to be so avoidant. Benny ordered a pizza for Dean when dinner rolled around, and let him eat it in bed with another dose of medication. Thankfully, opening the pizza box seemed to revive Dean and push him to voice what was on his mind.

“So did you talk to Sam? Did he answer the phone?” Dean’s mouth was halfway full with a slice of pepperoni, so it made interpreting his words a bit of a challenge.

“Uh, yeah. He picked up, told me off a little.” Benny was sitting next to the window, watching the covered impala in the lot and the purpling sky.

“Is he coming?”

Benny looked at Dean, seeing how he was trying to make the question seem casual, like it barely mattered. “He said... well, he said not right now.”

Dean shrugged and chewed. “So what are you going to do?”

“I just don’t know, Dean. I don’t have to be anywhere.”

“So does that mean you’ll stay?” Dean had an ice pack in his hand and moved it to the bridge of his nose so he could shut his eyes, and hide his face while he heard the answer.

“I don’t know, Dean. I can’t be a hunter. Do more harm than good, even with you by my side keeping me on the right path.”

“You aren’t some wild thing, Benny. You aren’t- y’know... one of the bad ones.” He gesticulated with his free hand.

“Not right now. I thought that when I was in purgatory, I was getting better at resisting the need. But it’s always there. Just like how I can hear your heart going from fifty yards.”

“Dude, I don’t want to send you back there. You deserve better than that.”

“I didn’t really think out my plan about coming back topside,” grumbled Benny.

“Plan?” Dean moved the ice pack away from his eyes.

“Yeah, when I met you in Purgatory, I already had the spell, and knew about a way out for humankind… but the reason I came out... that was just revenge, and now it’s over.”

“Because of what happened to Andrea.”

Benny shut his eyes at the sound of her name, thinking of her roaming purgatory alone. “Yeah, I wanted to burn Prentice island to the ground. I wanted to be on it when it went to ash.”

Dean sighed at that. “Glad you weren’t.”

“Me too, I guess..” Benny smiled easily despite his melancholy.

Dean sat down on the bed and patted the space beside him. The vampire went to sit next to him, facing his hunter, pulling him into a soft hug. He rubbed his side gently, trying to avoid the bruises that he’d all but memorized. It was good to feel him breathe under his hands, to feel the rise and fall of his ribs.

Then Dean had to go and kiss him hard enough that his teeth pinched Benny’s lip, and he forgot whatever thoughts he was mired in about his lover’s fragility and mortality.

Dean climbed on to straddle him, pushing Benny down on the bed with a little triumphant grunt. Benny kissed him back and lifted his hands to Dean’s shoulders, pulling him down close to him to feel his warmth blanketing his chest. It felt so goddamn good and he couldn’t resist, like a moth to a flame.

“Need you, Benny,” Dean groaned in his ear as he rubbed his hips against him.

Benny answered with a groan and put both his hands down on the taller man’s ass, kneading the firm muscle. “Yeah, I can feel that.”

“Can you reach the lube? Bedside drawer.” Benny nodded and kissed his jaw, enjoying the scruff under his chin.

He wanted to savor this but at the same time, he knew how Dean didn’t want him to make him feel like he was made of glass. He reached over to the table and found the drawer with a tube inside. He squirted some onto his hand and slid his hand down under the band of Dean’s boxers, and pressed his slicked finger over his entrance, pressing inside as Dean twitched against him.

“That’s cold.” The hunter squirmed.

“You’ll warm it up.” He slid his finger in and out of him, feeling the rim of tight muscle loosen as Dean shuddered and relaxed.

Dean hid his face against Benny’s chest and rolled his hips, panting hot against his shirt. Benny wanted to get out of his clothes- but in a way, doing it like this felt strangely hotter. He added a finger and rubbed carefully, listening to Dean’s breathing, and was immensely satisfied by the groan that escaped the hunter.

“Take me out.” Benny was convinced his cock would bear the imprint of his zipper along the underside. Dean palmed him and slid up to take off his own boxers, and then teased Benny’s zipper open slowly, so it wouldn’t pinch. He helped him out of his pants just enough to expose Benny’s cock to the base before he reached for the lube and stroked him with a slicked hand.

Benny’s fingers pressed in as far as he could go inside of Dean and brushed the spot that made his breath come up short.  

Dean nipped under his chin, grunting as he thrust back against the vampire’s hand. “Get in me, Benny,” he husked, legs splayed wide on either side of his hips.

He would have liked to add a third finger, but Dean was already brushing him against his entrance and sinking down on him. He pulled his fingers out as the head of his cock slipped into the man on top of him, closing his eyes at the fierce heat closing around him.

“Oh God, Dean.” Benny kept his hips still as Dean slipped down on him. The hunter pulled Benny’s shirt open, carelessly gathering it up before he grabbed onto his shoulders. He took him in all the way to the base and sat up on his lap, breathing deep.

Benny looked up at him as he raised his hips and came back down, utterly content to let him control his own pace.  

Dean sighed as he came to rest fully on him, adjusted to his girth. “Give me your hands.”

Benny took them off of Dean’s hips and let Dean grab them, watched as the hunter brought his palms to his lips and kissed them both. Then he took both and set them down at Benny’s sides, pinning his arms there with his knees.

“No touching,” said the hunter, managing to look cocky through the mosaic of bruises on his face.

Benny nodded up at Dean and outright lurched when he moved on top of him, his hips rolling slowly. The hunter watched him, lips parted, cheeks flushed. Dean’s arousal was plain and straining, occasionally brushing at the hair on Benny’s stomach, leaking drops of precome from the slit. Benny wanted to roll Dean under him and buck his hips into his tempting heat. His freckles stood out on his chest, strange constellations flexing over his muscles.

“ _Chére,_ I could watch this pretty show all day.” He knew his words affected him just from how his breath hitched.

Dean threw his head back and leaned to get Benny at just the right angle, shuddering when the tip of him slipped over his prostate. The hunter was going to shake himself apart on top of Benny without even once stroking himself. His cock made a filthy noise as it slapped against the vampire under him and Dean groaned softly, lips parted and eyes only open enough to show the glint of his pupils.

Benny knew he looked awestruck as he watched Dean, and thrust his hips to meet the hunter’s increasingly aggressive movements. Dean looked close, beads of sweat gathering on his brow and slithering down his temples. The vampire’s teeth were itching and aching, mirroring the build in his loins of burning pressure.

“Dean, Dean, I... please Dean, good God, please.”

“Gonna come, Benny? Give it to me, right now.” Dean reached down and grasped himself firmly, launching himself down on Benny’s cock like he was made for it.

Benny clenched and came, stomach tight and spine curling. He threw his head back and groaned, savoring the shudder of each spasm inside of Dean. The hunter rocked gently, echoing his noises.

It was a little while before he realized that Dean hadn’t climaxed on top of him, or even moved his hand from where it was clamped on the base of his dick. There was so much blood gathered in the tip that it looked purple, and he locked eyes with him, the green of his eyes nearly eclipsed by his dark pupils.

“Dean?” Benny tried to move his hands and the hunter shook his head.

“Just.. let me,” said Dean as he got off of him slowly. He took a few deep breaths and stood up next to the bed, looking down at Benny. His eyes roved over his body and Benny felt strangely exposed, even though most of his clothes were still on. Dean breathed deep and took his time, pulling his clothes open and gently pulling his limbs from his shirt and jeans. “I’m not done yet.”

Benny nodded “I’m on board for whatever you need, brother.”

He chuckled, and for a moment he seemed just like his normal self again. Dean picked up his hand and pulled Benny upright. “I want to fuck you.”

“You just did, sugar.” He found himself grinning.

“If you don’t want to let me, just say so.”

He hoped his shrug would hide his nerves. “You think you can make it good?” He looked down at Dean’s very plainly interested cock.

“I know a few tricks.”

Benny rolled over onto his stomach and looked back at Dean. The hunter put his hands on Benny’s back, his palms tracing the muscles there reverently, callouses scratching at his spine with soft strokes. “No snappy comeback, Benny?”

“You can’t hurt me, go right ahead.”

Dean knelt over him and kissed the center of his back, being uncharacteristically tender. “I know,” he murmured in his ear, and reached for the lube. “But maybe I want you to feel how you make me feel.”

That gave Benny pause, and he nodded and stretched out under him, not shuddering at all when his fingers brushed down his cleft and rubbed against his entrance. Dean mouthed at his shoulder and pushed an incredibly slick finger inside. Benny closed his eyes and tried to stay pliant and relaxed around him, and thankfully Dean seemed content to take his time, even as his hot length branded his thigh.

The hunter shifted and pushed Benny’s legs apart, moving his finger deeper, taking enough care that there wasn’t even a hint of discomfort for Benny. He turned his head to the side, looking back at Dean. “I can take it... you can add more.”

He made a satisfied little humming sound and kept working him with one finger, using his other hand to cup his balls gently. After a few moments of the delicious push-squeeze rhythm, he slowly added a second finger and dipped his head to nibble at the nape of Benny’s neck.

Benny let out a shuddering groan. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, this fullness. Dean could play him like a harp, and he wasn’t even able to compare what was happening to anything he’d experienced before. It came as a little bit of a shock to feel himself harden against the bedspread. “Dean,” he bit his lip.

“Yeah?” His voice was low, clouded with arousal.

“You’re making me hard as a rock like that.”

The hunter sucked in a breath and twisted his fingers gently. “Told you.” He added a third finger with the faintest hint of a burn but it subsided as Benny let himself accept it.  Dean kept his hands down where they were, but knelt down lower, until his breath washed warm over the base of Benny’s spine and his lips grazed his left ass cheek.

“Dean, I’m good, you can just fuck me.” He wasn’t used to having so much attention lavished on him, and it was vaguely embarrassing. _Hot as hell,_ but it made him feel like he was being waited on.

He pulled his fingers out of Benny, not answering. He tested the rim a few more times with his fingertips, then leaned down and probed his tongue inside, stubble scratching around his hole.

Benny’s fingers clutched the covers and he made an entirely strange sound in the back of his throat. _Christ, was he whining?_

Dean huffed and lapped at him, apparently encouraged. Benny couldn’t get over how sensitive he felt down there, how he thought he could feel the pulse of Dean’s heart through the pebbled surface of his tongue.

He made an utterly disgraceful noise and shuddered. “Dean, please, I _need_ you to fuck me.”

Dean prodded him a few more times before withdrawing and reaching for the lube, then draping himself over Benny’s back, and letting the head of his cock catch on his slick rim. His heartbeat was quick and light in Benny’s ears as he pushed his hips forward, pushing into his yielding entrance.

“Oh lord,” Benny whimpered. “Keep going, please. Don’t stop, Dean.”

The hunter rocked a little, sliding out a fraction of an inch to push back in deeper. He felt impossibly large inside of him, and Benny was aware that he himself was actually a little thicker than Dean and the hunter had no trouble with his size.

Benny pushed back against him, hips raising just a little.

Dean was forcing himself to breathe calmly, trying to hold himself back. It made him sound strangled when he groaned in Benny’s ear. “That’s it, Benny. Fuck, you’re taking it all.”

It was odd how that set off a little spark of pride in Benny’s chest. He rolled his hips back against the hunter and froze with a shaky moan when Dean’s cock brushed his prostate at a more direct angle.

“Just like that, huh?” Dean’s forehead was between his shoulderblades, neck craned down. Benny liked to do that when he was in Dean too, to watch where he disappeared into his body.

“Dean, please tell me you’re close, I can’t hold out much longer.” He shuddered and pushed back against his cock.

He grunted and snapped his hips forward, suddenly picking up his pace, and reached around to grip Benny’s cock as he shoved him through his fist.

Benny tried to hold off, determined to wait until Dean was on the edge along with him, but he sent him over the edge with a long, suddenly slow thrust that pressed persistently against the sensitive bundle of nerves and the vampire shuddered as he spilled over Dean’s fingers.  

Dean shuddered and cried out behind his clenched teeth, moving in a few quick uneven thrusts. He flooded Benny’s insides with warmth and eventually began to breathe again, taking in great gulps of air.

When he pulled out, Dean wobbled to lay on the bed, panting, “Are you okay?” His eyes were already almost closing, but a green slice of his pupils considered Benny’s awestruck face.

Benny stayed face down where he was on the comforter, and nodded softly. “Yeah, that.. that was really good, Dean.”

Dean grinned, seeming almost able to ignore how it hurt his bruised lip and cheek.  “Awesome.” He murmured.

Sometimes it struck Benny like a ton of bricks- if it weren’t for the very specific set of circumstances that lead to his becoming a vampire, that led to Dean being what he was, they’d never have met. Then again, if Benny wasn’t a monster, and Dean wasn’t a hunter, they wouldn’t need to be apart. He couldn’t trade this love for all the world, but he knew he’d never hold it in his arms and call it _his._

 

* * *

 

Benny gathered his things together, leaving the empty Beretta on the nightstand. He wrote a note on a piece of the motel’s stationary and tucked it underneath, inside the holster. It didn’t say much, but it took him an hour to write and he couldn’t see through the tears some of the time. Dean’s snoring was like a slow metronome, lapping at his frayed nerves. He regretted this already, knew that leaving would hurt and haunt him and Dean both, but couldn’t justify staying, not when he would put Dean at risk until the day he got his head taken off.

He walked out onto the highway with his cooler and his bag of clothes and money, newspaper tucked into the outside of the bag. Cape Girardeau awaited him, up in Missouri, where he would find the address listed from the estate sale in the paper. Not that he really knew what he wanted to find there. His son was long gone, as well as Benny’s grandchildren, but he had a powerful desire to look at where Charles had lived, and assure himself that he had been comfortable, and happy, and loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Ça c'est bon: "That's good."


	17. Tea for One

 

Benny wasn’t exactly certain when his plan had formed, whether it was when he’d first seen the ad, or later, when the gravity of everything had sunk in. He wasn’t sure what laid ahead of him, but he figured that he had all the time in the world to make his way to the address and see if anything was left for him to see.

He hitched a ride for a few hours, and when the sun came up, he split from the trucker to rest in the shade of a willow growing strangely close to a cattle-auction yard.  His phone rang in his pocket. It could only be one person, and he missed him already. Benny pulled it out and looked at the caller screen. He had only six percent of a battery. He answered anyway.

“Dean?”

Dean scoffed angrily on the other end of the line. “A dear John letter? _Really?”_

“Brother, I’m not leaving you for someone else, so not really.” Benny leaned his back against the tree, head turned away from the pinpricks of sunlight.

“So you’re just going to go it alone?”

“I’m sorry, Dean. I shoulda said goodbye when you were awake, but I knew I couldn’t go through with it.”

Dean’s grinding teeth were audible. “This is bullshit, Benny.”

“Yeah, I know, but I can’t help it.”

He sighed heavily. “Why’d you say; _you are my sunshine?”_

Benny rubbed his forehead. He felt stupidly sentimental and embarrassed about that line in particular. “Because it’s true.”

“Am I burning you up?” Dean asked.

“You’re gonna get hurt if I stick around.”

“No I won’t,” he insisted.

“I can’t, Dean, I just can’t.” He bit his lip.

“Yeah, great. So what are you gonna do?”

“Stay away from big towns. Stay away from people. Try to- I don’t know... exist without hurtin’ folks.”

“Please just let me know where you are. I’ll come get you.”

Benny’s throat felt tight. He wiped his eyes. “I’ll call you in a week, brother.”

“I’ll come get you then, okay?” Dean sounded desperate.

“No, Dean, you need to patch things up with Sam.” He heard a beep in his ear and looked at the phone as it shut itself down.

He spent a few moments looking at the dead little piece of plastic before he put it away. Benny laid down flat on his back and put an arm up over his eyes, both to keep out the sun and to hide any wetness clinging to the corners of his eyes.

He sat and listened to the sounds of the road, and the cows in the auction yard nearby. Eventually he was able to doze off.

 

* * *

 

The dream that came for him was a strange relief.  If he had a choice of what he’d be a party to, he’d pick something simple, like just fishing in a little boat back before he was turned- or more recent, like Dean falling against him in Purgatory and laughing in his ear, lips lingering just a little too long. For the first time in more than a week, he didn’t dream about being topside.

Benny settled into the feel of the coat on his shoulders, the bone of his blade in his hand. Fog breathed through the trees and crept lazily along the ground, weaved over his shoes and embraced him. This felt like a dream, felt as though his movements were assigned, surreal and disconnected from his will, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find the _when_ of this place. Sure, it was purgatory, but … a corner of it that was mostly unfamiliar and strange.

Dean walked by him, marching methodically, eyes fixed ahead. Benny blinked and ambled after him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a dream that wasn’t a recurring event.

The problem with it was that it felt like it was written on sand. He had seen this place before, it was definitely a place in purgatory that he’d been with Dean, but it seamlessly blended into unfamiliar shadows and trees. It was though his eyes weren’t working properly. As though they were _human._

He didn’t have time to muse over the oddness of it. “Dean, _damnit,_ don’t walk away.” Benny persisted after him, like he always did when they were in this place. Like it was his job.

When Dean spoke to him he couldn’t pick out a single word from his sentence. He felt the hum of his voice on the air, but whatever Dean actually said refused to settle in his ears. Benny blinked and stopped in his tracks- that was another novelty; he could never wrench his body from the prescribed track, he was always dangling from strings.

He was so caught up in the weirdness of having a choice that he didn’t notice Dean in front of him again, piercing his chest with Benny’s own blade as he pulled him into an embrace. He was swallowed by smoke that tasted like a bonfire.

Benny jolted awake, still in the shade of the willow tree. He didn’t want to sleep anymore. The vampire shouldered his backpack and picked up his cooler, deciding to try to pay a trucker to get him to Missouri.

 

* * *

 

Benny got into Cape Girardeau in the late afternoon, and meandered until he stopped at a roadside wrecking yard and paid them a thousand bucks for a truck that worked, with a plywood camper shell on the back. The paint on the whole thing was peeling and yellow-green, and it once again reinforced the strange idea that things from the 70’s, especially vehicles, were not at all new. Brand new cars resembled expensive newfangled appliances to Benny. He wasn’t really all that sad that the radio didn’t work.

He slid behind the wheel of the Ford and felt himself relax.  A vampire wandering alone without any shelter was one thing, but this truck could work to hide him from the sun and from prying eyes. The locks worked so he could stash his cooler without fear that it would be stolen or gone through. The easy start and hum of the motor made him smile, too- something simple, that was all his.

He drove around the town, stopping to buy a map in a gas station. Apparently Cape Girardeau was something of a tourist trap, and the attendant, a woman in her mid-fifties, insisted that he look at a map of downtown and listen to her recommendations of antique shops. Benny was more than happy to provide an open ear since she also let him plug his phone into an outlet with his charger. Of course, as soon as he turned it on it displayed a few missed calls from Dean and Benny’s smile wilted.

“M’am, I’m sorry to interrupt you, looks like work’s calling.”

She looked a little sad to lose her captive audience. “Alright, well, what was the address you were looking for?”

He smiled as she got out a map that extended out into the county areas north of the city.

 

* * *

 

He rolled his truck down the gravel and dirt drive, slowly winding up to a house on a small rise amongst a few spreading oaks and dogwood trees. There was a moving truck around near an outbuilding, and another couple of cars parked nearby. Benny parked on the grass and sat for a moment, grateful for today’s cloud cover and threat of rain. He could afford to take his time getting to the house and looking around it.

Benny got out of his truck and walked up to the house. It was low, and made of yellow brick, with ornate little copper awnings that were oxidizing to a bright green. A few flowers were erupting in a yard to the side of the driveway, poppies and zinnias by the look of them.

The garage stood open, folding tables laid out inside with boxes of  household incidentals scattered across them. It looked like they were still sorting through things, maybe figuring out what was worth keeping. He stared at the boxes for a long while, dwelling a bit on whose house he was standing in front of, whose life he’d missed.

He knocked at the screen door, and a man answered, pushing his glasses up his nose. Benny pondered whether he looked at all familiar, as if he could be seeing a relation right in front of him.

“Are you the contractor?”

Benny blinked and figured he might be able to lie a little. “Sometimes. I’m Roy. Looking for an old friend used to live here.”

“Oh, were you acquainted with the family?”  

As soon as he nodded, the little man stepped aside and let Benny in. The house, as he moved through it, seemed hollow and bare. A few random objects were arranged in the living room on tables without much care or order- a little Japanese tea set shared the table with an anniversary clock and an air compressor.  

He turned to thank the little spectacled fellow and found that he was already leaving, walking away down the hall towards what Benny assumed were the bedrooms.

There were echoes of a faint conversation from the rear of the house, and one of the voices was familiar to him. He waited, debating, until the discussion finished, and then walked into the room to see Elizabeth filling out a ledger.

He cleared his throat. “Hi Elizabeth.”

She turned her head and dropped the pen, standing up.

Benny wasn’t sure if her expression was fearful or just upset, so he took a step back. “Sorry to drop in like this.”

“R... Roy. Benny. Holy shit, it’s you.” His great-granddaughter took a few heaving breaths and blinked at him. “I didn’t think... how’d you find out that this was happening?”

“Remember Dean?”

She nodded.

“Well, a friend of his found the ad in the paper.”

She wiped her eyes. “ _Christ,_ I’m sorry. That’s a hell of a way to find out.”

“Well... when I worked at the diner I could have asked you more about the family... but it didn’t feel right.”

“D... do you want to sit down?” She seemed nervous, but he didn’t think she was afraid, exactly.

“Sure, for a bit. Don’t worry, I won’t stay long.” Benny tried not to make any sudden moves. Elizabeth had seen him take a man down, rip out his throat with his teeth, and end him on the floor of her diner. He decided not to mention it.

“Do you want any tea, or coffee?” She went to the stove and turned on a burner, putting a kettle on. “I think the french press is in a box around here somewhere.”

“No thank you, I’m just fine.”

She nodded, looking at the stove. Elizabeth seemed lost in thought for a minute, hands resting on the counter. “How old was Grandpa Charlie when you disappeared?”

Benny sighed. “Thirteen.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“It wasn’t a good time for me, so no- not really.”

Elizabeth nodded a little. “Yeah, I guess it’s easy enough to imagine. Charles thought you might have run off with another woman, but your wife… I guess  great grandma Cordelia thought you had fallen overboard and drowned. She got remarried during the war.”

Benny hadn’t really thought about what Cordelia might have done after his vanishing, and he realized that it was to keep himself from feeling the pit of guilt welling up inside him. He folded his hands on his lap and looked out the window. “When did she die?”

“Nineteen sixty-something... I wasn’t born yet. I have a couple of her quilts here, if you want.”

“I don’t think I want anything. I don’t know if I really have a right to it.” He wiped his forehead. “What was Charles like?”

“He was my grandpa. I mean, he was nice, and knew a lot about making bread... never let gran do it, he said she kneaded it too hard every time and spent too long measuring.” Elizabeth smiled in a small, private way. “Hang on. I’ll go get the album.”

“Oh, you really don’t need to.” He sat up a little straighter.

“Benny, just let me show you.”

The vampire sat there, thinking about how he could be gone before she returned with the photos; get out before he could see his absence spelled out so plainly in sepia tones. But he never stood up, or even shifted his feet.

Elizabeth ambled back into the room and set the book down in front of him. “Here, this is... _was_ Charles’ photo album.”

Benny looked at it, wondering if it was too late to run before the thing could burn his skin. Elizabeth stood and considered him mutely as the kettle began to whistle and rattle over the steady flames on the stovetop. She said nothing, just shuffled to the counter to pour a pair of cups.

The photo album had a brown leather cover, and large, black pages that smelled of old tobacco and sharp, bitter age. Benny let his hand hover over the top, and finally opened it to see himself on the first page, standing with Cordelia and Charles in front of their little shotgun shack. He murmured under his breath and touched the tape, where his name was scrawled in a clipped pencil script. He could almost remember the name of the neighbor boy who’d taken the photo.   

“Did you say something?” She turned from the counter and came back to the table to sit down with the cups. “Oh, shoot, I forgot you didn’t want any.” Benny turned the page in a hurry, fleeing from the vision of his mortal self.

“ _Non._ It’s all right, cheré.” He blinked at the monochrome pictures until his vision cleared, and he was able to turn the pages. This seemed like it was mostly Charles’s album from his time in the service. He stopped cold when he recognized the bombed rubble of  Dresden and closed the book, folding his hands over his face.

“Benny?” Elizabeth sounded concerned.

“I need to leave, I’m sorry.” He stood up suddenly, bumping the table and sloshing the coffee on the tabletop.

She squeaked and reached for the pictures, but Benny snatched up the photo album before the steaming liquid could get it.

“Okay.” Elizabeth held out her hands for the book, standing up. Benny understood well enough that there was nothing here he could keep, or should have even seen.

He let her take it from his hands and looked down and away. “Do you think ... when he was older, that he’d forgiven me for never coming home?”

She was quiet, fidgeting with her dark hair and tucking it back behind her ears. “He never spoke ill of you, that I heard.”

Benny nodded numbly, putting his hands in his pockets. Then he realized what he was hearing, another heartbeat in the house, familiar as breathing. He knew he’d been found and froze.

Elizabeth backed away, face full of trepidation. “Benny, are you okay?”

He realized that he must seem unhinged and tried to visibly relax. “Yeah... Dean’s here, that’s all.”

“Your friend, Dean?” She set the album down on the counter and picked up a towel to clean the table. “Why do you look like you swallowed a bug, then?”

He laughed softly. “I’ll spare you the details. He’s a good friend, but I planned on being here alone.”

“Oh. So… you want to sneak out?”

“Yeah, I need some fresh air anyway. It’s good to see you, darlin’.”

She patted his shoulder before giving him the softest, gentlest hug. He held Elizabeth for a brief moment and pulled away as soon as seemed polite. It was strange to want to hold someone so close and at the same time feel like they were burning him up.  

He left out the back door and walked around the house, appreciating the fresh smell of an impending storm. He found the impala parked next to his truck, close enough to block it in so he’d have to drive into a ditch to leave. Dean had him cornered. Benny smiled sadly and sat down on the tailgate of the Ford to wait.


	18. Misfits

Benny sat, legs hanging down, sheltered by the camper shell’s opened hatch. He stared at the Impala, trying to rehearse what he could say. The car was still dented, but the rear window had been replaced. He couldn’t help but think of the car as an extension of Dean. It was like a suit of armor for him.

Now and then a drop of rain hit the roof like a drum.

Dean rounded the barn and saw him there and raised his hand. Benny leaned back against the cooler and raised his hand too, watching his hunter walk closer. Damn him, but Dean looked good in that suit- the bruises on his face were faded, no longer so dark and vivid. There was still the greenish discoloration that shadowed his eye beneath the bottom lid, but the swelling was gone. He walked around the Impala, loosening his tie.

“Guess you found me.” Benny said hollowly, expecting Dean to be angry, to be accusatory and confrontational. He remembered how much it had hurt Dean when Cas ran away in purgatory. Even he, when it wasn’t any of his business, had trouble watching that in silence.

He didn’t expect the hunter to just sit on the hood of his car, facing him. “You can’t just run off like that, Benny.”

He nodded and adjusted his sunglasses, then reconsidered and took them off. “I didn’t think I could break your heart to your face, Dean.”

Dean huffed and rolled his head on his shoulders, and for a moment it almost seemed like he wanted to deny that he’d been that invested, and Benny braced himself for the pain that would bring him.

“I get it. I don’t want to get it, but I do,” Dean said, looking up at the sky. “Just tell me, did that last time we uh… made love,” he said it awkwardly, as if the words weren’t his native tongue. “Did that have anything to do with it?”

Benny grimaced. “No, Dean. Absolutely not.”

The hunter rubbed the back of his neck. “If I told you I loved you would that be enough?”

That hurt like a stab through his chest. “It ain’t a matter of _enough,_ brother. I know you love me.”

Dean bit his lip and looked away into the distance. The weather was indifferent to their conversation. It started to rain.

Benny reached out and put his hand on Dean’s sleeve, giving him a chance to pull away. He didn’t, and so he tugged the taller man close under the shelter of his camper shell. Dean seemed twitchy, his breath shallow.

“I know how things are, Benny, I’m not denying it. You’re a vampire, and that makes things… complicated. But I never do anything easy.”

“I know. But I ain’t some lost little lamb, Dean. You don’t need to keep me safe,” whispered Benny. He touched Dean’s chest softly, feeling his suit, brushing the few raindrops on his lapel. A fresh one struck his fingertip and he looked up to find that Dean was wiping his eyes, fresh tears squeezing out despite his efforts.  Benny cupped his cheeks with his hands and waited for him to pull himself together. He sat down on the tailgate again and pulled him to stand between his knees.

After a space of several breaths, Dean opened his eyes, the pupils startlingly green next to his bloodshot capillaries.  “You’re family. Not blood, but something just as good.”

Benny nodded. “I’ll do anything you need, but I have to keep you out of harm’s way, and that means you stop hunting or I stay out of your way.”

“Stop hunting? Is that what you want?”

The vampire shook his head. “I never asked you to stop, Dean. I don’t want you to stop bein’ who you are.”

Dean leaned down and rested his forehead against Benny’s “You aren’t keeping me safe by staying away. _Cas_ was _wrong_ and you’re wrong.”

That gave Benny pause. “Dean, it ain’t like that at _all._ You... you see a situation, and you have to help people.” The vampire closed his eyes. “If I don’t stay away from bad things, I’m gonna be one of them.”

The hunter nuzzled his cheek and cupped his head, combing his calloused hands through the short hair on the back of his head. “I’m sorry. I said I understand, and I do. I just- I’m so tired of not getting what I want.”

Benny kissed him softly on the cheek. “Call me anytime you need. I’ll keep the phone charged up.”

Dean stood up, wiping his eyes again. “Yeah. And if you get into trouble I’ll back you up.”

“I’ll keep my nose clean.”

Dean reached inside his jacket, nodding. He pulled out a yellowed photograph, and Benny jerked as he recognized the deckled edge. He’d seen it just minutes before. “Elizabeth said you needed this.”

He shook his head. “Brother, the last thing I need is that picture. They’re all gone, and I can’t… I can’t-” now he was the one wiping tears from his eyes. “You keep it. Please.”

Dean clearly hadn’t expected Benny to have such a visceral reaction to the ancient photograph. “Yeah. I’ll keep it.”

The vampire took a moment to put himself back together while Dean tucked it back into his coat. He still stood between his knees, quite close.

The rain started to blow under the overhang of the camper shell and spatter on Benny’s legs. He scooted back into the cramped space, gesturing to Dean. “You’ll catch your death if you get soaked, _chère._ ”

For a hesitant second it seemed as though Dean would rather get into his car right away and leave, but then he climbed in beside him and settled his weight against Benny’s side. The vampire put his arm up around him and leaned on the wheel well.

They laid like that for a time, listening to the patter on the fiberglass roof as the drops came in staccato spurts. Benny was more than content to simply hold the hunter close and savor the sound of his heart. He knew that when the rain let up, that Dean would pick himself up and drive off, and he told himself that that was just fine, and that was as it should be. He had to believe that he was doing right by letting him go.

Benny wasn’t the praying kind; he knew that there was a heaven, and a hell, and angels and maybe even God, but they had nothing to do with his kind. Still, he looked down at Dean curled against his side in his suit, which was likely getting rumpled, and he let himself wish. _Keep him safe,_ he prayed. _He’s going to get hurt, he’s going to let it happen, he’ll put himself in harm’s way. But you have to let him live._

He would go far away from here, and never come back. He’d drive out to a limitless, remote place and dream in silence, to drink the blood of animals when he couldn’t deny himself anymore. Maybe he’d find a way to not miss this profound man lying next to him, but it wasn’t likely. It would burn him up, missing Dean, and the longer he stayed, the worse it felt in the pit of his stomach. Despite it, he closed his eyes and lay still.

The rain kept on, steady now and settling over the sound of Dean’s beating heart. 

* * *

 

 

 The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are appreciated. <3


	19. Author's Notes

Firstly, massive thanks to [TKodami](http://tkodami.tumblr.com/) who not only did the fantastic art- she also gave me a beta read. 

The lovely [j-beth-h](http://j-beth-h.tumblr.com/) also provided an earlier beta and kicked me a few times when I needed it. (I needed it a lot.) 

[what_about_the_fish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/what_about_the_fish) gave me another beta that fished out more structural problems and really helped me with the ind of the fic, which I stared at until my eyeballs bled. 

 

* * *

 

>  
> 
> Music:

[The Mixtape](https://youtu.be/TyOzcx7Xblo?list=PLucsooeOCbWZLfVUFZwjtuPgaAmsQeIb7) is not essential but there's a lot in it that I felt added to the story, so if you like classic rock at all, you should probably try it out. 

Bonus track:  
There's No Way Out of Here by David Gilmour (I have an unhealthy obsession with this song [so here's a direct link.](https://youtu.be/1xUD6MWmSAc))  

 

* * *

>  
> 
> Location Notes:

The rocking chair on the side of the highway [is a real thing](http://www.windracer.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/IMG_8797.jpg). 

Vicksburg was also researched in detail: [Beulah Cemetary](https://coastcaritas.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/20140301_133619.jpg), [Kuhn Memorial Hospital](https://misspreservation.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/p1050838.jpg), and the [Army Core of Engineers Building](https://www.google.com/maps/place/827+Crawford+St,+Vicksburg,+MS+39180/@32.3488728,-90.8803966,3a,75y,194.54h,88.19t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sn5X1OaQJU3j68RWLt8nc5w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dn5X1OaQJU3j68RWLt8nc5w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D100%26h%3D80%26yaw%3D79.570221%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x8628e026c026fded:0xce964feb294948e2) (and its abandoned courthouse neighbor) are all real places.   The Ramada Inn is not.  

[Eagle Lake](http://images.lakehousevacations.com/files/static_google_maps/cat/524.png) is not very well photographed, and apparently floods often. 

 

 

* * *

>  
> 
> References:

When Benny refers to his [Jack Ruby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby) impression, he is referring to the man who shot [Lee Harvey Oswald](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald) while in police custody. I have it in my head that Benny died that same year but heard a lot about it on the radio. 

All of my cajun words and information generally were derived from this [hellscape of a website](http://louisianacajunslang.com/language.html). From my own experience, it seems about accurate. 

 

 

 

 


End file.
